Control Phase

Project Name: Streamlining Customer Complaints Investigations

Problem Statement: The time to complete a complaint investigation needs to be shortened to accommodate for the frequency of complaints throughout the year to ensure timelines are met.

Moving onto the control phase of this project, I utilized the following tools:

·         Develop Control

·         Review of metrics

·         Establish or Update SOPs- Complete during the improve phase

·         Establish or Update Training Plan- Complete during the improve phase

·         Cost/ Benefit Analysis

·         Further developments

For the purposes of this blog, I will focus on the use of the development of control, review of metrics and further developments.

Develop Control: On implementation of the associated procedural updates and re-training, changes were monitored closely by ensuring that any concerns were communicated to me at the time or within our weekly complaints meeting. I ensured that any clarifications were communicated during the weekly meeting or through email where immediate clarification was required.

Timelines for closure will be monitored closely through weekly team meetings and cross functional meeting with the Regulatory department. The metrics for complaint closure will continue to be highlighted to management through our monthly metrics updates. Finally, the updates to the procedures and practices will be assessed in an ongoing manner through the internal audit system and also through any notified bodies performing re –certification or surveillance audits. These controls will ensure that the updates to the system have been successfully implemented and monitored for compliance going forward.

Review of metrics: On review of the metrics established at the beginning of this project, it will not be possible to measure the benefit of the closure date for reportable and non reportable complaints during this control phase of this project. However, it is possible to measure some of the reduction in time per complaint as a result of the changes. On review of the updated system the time per complaint has been already been reduced by on average 99 minutes. In addition, the peer review has also been reduced by 10 minutes as a result of the attachments and information which has been removed and no longer needs to be verified. As stated above in the improve phase there are a number of changes which were also implemented which at this point in time are not measureable but will ultimately reduce the time of the complaint investigation.

 

Further developments: Following the implementation of the project and the measureable and foreseeable improvements which have been made to the system, there were a number of further improvements which were highlighted during the project which will be reviewed for further analysis to determine if the updates to the system will have a positive output. The structure used in this project could be applied to further projects to ensure that the project is scoped out accordingly, resources allocated and the tools can be utilized to ensure the correct root cause and solutions are assigned for the improvements going forward. The following points are areas which could be reviewed for further improvement to reduce the timelines even further.

• Too much detail in lab evaluation
• Difference in failure modes tracker and Trackwise
• FMEAs not up to date
• Business objects often failing
• Business objects takes too long to run
• Trackwise locking out after certain time
• Too many fields in Trackwise
• End user information insufficient

Lessons Learnt: The utilization of the six sigma tools has proven to be successful for this project. As this was my first time using these tools in practice it was quite daunting but I now have an appreciation for how useful following the DMIAC structure can be for a project. The following points were key to the implementation of this project:

·         The day to day users of the system are essential for input

·         Ensure all stakeholders have their voice

·         Do not jump to the corrective action

·         Invest the necessary time into the six sigma tools

·         Ongoing communication on the status of the project is essential to ensure that implementation can be successful

·         Be willing to embrace change