Free DMAIC template for rapid process improvement
Blog: Monday Project Management Blog
DMAIC, a structured five-step approach to process improvement that is an important part of the Six Sigma initiative, is a popular and powerful methodology for identifying areas of improvement and determining appropriate actions to remedy them. What’s less helpful, however, is having to set up a fresh new document every time you plan to use the DMAIC model. That’s where templates come in.
A DMAIC template lets product and project managers skip the document setup phase and dive straight into process improvement initiatives. It also ensures consistency across multiple departments and Sigma DMAIC studies.
In this article, we’ll share our DMAIC template and explain how to use it to kickstart your DMAIC initiatives. We’ll even showcase some helpful examples to inspire you.
What is a DMAIC template?
DMAIC — which stands for define, measure, analyze, improve, and control — is a business process improvement methodology that focuses on collecting extensive data, analyzing it to find an opportunity for improvement, and suggesting appropriate business changes. As it’s a data-driven quality management framework, users of DMAIC need a formalized document for capturing this information (i.e., the DMAIC template).
A DMAIC template includes headers for each of the five high-level phases involved in the quality improvement procedure, with space to include information specific to your DMAIC study under each header. For example, here’s what a PowerPoint template for DMAIC might look like.
Why use a DMAIC template?
The main benefit you’ll receive from using a DMAIC template is efficiency. Rather than having to spend a good 20-30 minutes creating a document to capture your DMAIC data, you can simply save a copy of the template — keeping the original intact for future use — and get straight into identifying areas for improvement.
Considering one of the main reasons you’d want to use this standalone quality improvement process in the first place is to identify opportunities to increase efficiency, it only makes sense to take the most efficient route to begin!
There are a few other benefits to using a DMAIC template, however:
- Consistency – You’ll use the same template across all departments, team members, and DMAIC studies, meaning your data will be easier to understand and interpret across the board.
- Improved results – You can use the learnings from each DMAIC study to make changes to your template and then apply these learnings to subsequent studies.
- Professionalism – DMAIC templates are designed to look sharp and professional, which paints you in a good light when you share findings with your clients or leadership team.
What are common use cases for the DMAIC template?
Let’s explore how different companies can use a DMAIC template to boost product quality and productivity.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing lines are ideal candidates for DMAIC, as they are repetitive and cyclical, providing ample opportunity to capture data to analyze and improve upon.
Here’s how a company could use our DMAIC template to improve its manufacturing process:
- Define – Identify the specific products and workflows to monitor and the goal we’d like to reach. For example: green widget, packaging workflow, increased throughput.
- Measure – Define the metrics you’ll track. Monitor for a reasonable period of time to capture statistically meaningful data. For example: number of products packaged correctly. Monitor production for five days.
- Analyze – Identify and address outliers and look for trends. For example: production output drops between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.
- Improve – Put your countermeasures in place. Monitor the process to ensure the desired improvement. For example: machine shut-off 2.30 p.m.-3 p.m. to cool down and replace component A.
- Control – Implement measures to maintain. For example: install output monitoring device to notify operators when production drops due to machine overheating.
By following the lead of this example, you can optimize any process within your manufacturing plants. You can also use a similar approach if you develop software, apps, or other digital products.
All industries: improving your company culture
DMAIC templates can also be used outside of the production realm. For example, it can be a helpful framework for improving company culture:
- Define – Live up to the company’s value statements.
- Measure – Determine the leadership behaviors that will influence cultural change — such as demonstrating the values in practice, communicating goals to employees, and conducting team meetings to identify paths to achieving the company vision.
- Analyze – Understand the gaps between the current and desired cultures. For example, leaders may not be observably demonstrating the defined values. Define the actions that will close these gaps — leadership focus on values, for example.
- Improve – Implement these measures. Provide training and coaching to leaders. Consider removing reluctant or incapable leaders. Conduct employee surveys and one-on-one interviews to understand the impact of new initiatives.
- Control – Establish a regular cadence for monitoring employee sentiment. Implement an employee of the month initiative based on company values.
Don’t be afraid to use the DMAIC template to improve a variety of workflows and processes within your business.
monday.com’s DMAIC template
While most DMAIC templates are designed on word editors and presentation platforms like PowerPoint, we’ve decided to take ours a step further. Our template includes everything you need to run a DMAIC study — headers for each phase and a field to enter relevant data below each one — and because it’s built on the monday.com Work OS, it opens up a world of other helpful process improvement and workflow management tools. Like what? Glad you asked.
Time tracking column
You can use the Time Tracking Column in your monday.com work management board to measure the amount of time spent on each activity if your DMAIC study intends to identify areas of slow performance.
Custom reporting dashboards
Once you’ve completed your DMAIC review and implemented appropriate controls, you can set up a custom dashboard in the monday.com Work OS with the relevant reports — think stacked charts, performance by employee, and Pareto charts — and check at a glance that the controls you’ve put in place are doing what you designed them to.
Multiple workflow views
When you manage work on monday.com, your team can view upcoming tasks in whichever way they work most efficiently. Do you have one employee who likes Kanban and another who prefers data to be displayed in a Table? Not a problem. With monday.com, each employee can use their preferred view while simultaneously working on the same board!
DMAIC template tips & tricks
Are you unsure about the best way to use our DMAIC template? Here are a few helpful tips and tricks to set you on the right path.
Choosing an appropriate goal
When defining your project goals, choose tasks that make a meaningful and noticeable difference but aren’t too difficult to address. That’s the sweet spot where you’ll get the most return on your investment. You must also choose a project for which you’ll be able to collect sufficient data.
Observe before you act
For example, you might wish to use the DMAIC framework to improve your company’s process to design content briefs for its freelance writers. Rather than simply setting this as a goal, spend some time observing first. You might find, for example, that a more appropriate definition would be to improve the keyword research aspect of that process specifically.
The “mere measurement effect”
Be careful of a scientific phenomenon known as the “mere measurement effect,” wherein simply observing and measuring an action can influence how the action is performed and thereby the data you capture. Solve for this potential effect by spending extra time during the measurement phase — several days, for example — and ignoring the data you capture in the first few observations.
FAQs about DMAIC templates
What is the DMAIC procedure?
DMAIC is a five-step procedure for business process improvement:
- Define phase – Determine the problem you’re looking to solve. What is the ideal outcome you’d like to achieve?
- Measure phase – Capture relevant data regarding the process and the problem.
- Analyze phase – Review your data, identify cause-effect relationships between inputs and outputs, determine potential solutions.
- Improve phase – Implement your suggested solutions.
- Control phase – Establish standards to maintain going forward to ensure improvements are sustained.
How do I write a DMAIC problem statement?
A problem statement in the lean Six Sigma/DMAIC technique should include the following information:
- A brief description of the problem
- The metric used to monitor and describe the problem
- Where the problem is occurring (the name of the process)
- The timeframe over which the problem has been identified
- The magnitude of the problem
What are the five stages of process improvement?
The five stages of business process improvement are:
- Define
- Measure
- Analyze
- Improve
- Control
What does DMAIC stand for?
DMAIC is a business process improvement procedure that stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.
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