Chetan received a worrying phone call from one of his clients. The client had raised concern, over the dropping performance of the team and the lack of tool feedback. This was something that he had been expecting from the last two months. Thinking about the same he started walking towards the cafeteria.
On his way to the cafeteria, Chetan started recollecting the initial days when the process – GSD Fraud Monitoring was transitioned to his team. The client, a global leader in computer manufacturing, was facing severe financial losses due to the fraudulent warranty claims in the market. To curb this, the client had designed a system that would assign a unique service tag to each product being produced and then the product would be tracked using this for its lifetime. Since then the process of uploading the service tags into the newly designed tool was managed by Chetan and his team. The team was also tasked with doing sample audits on the uploaded service tags and provides regular feedback to the client on the functioning of the tool.
This process ran smoothly when the team had to process service tags of a single product class per day. However the situation changed once the team was asked to manage five additional product classes which increased the volume by 300%. Owing to this increased volume, Chetan estimated that, this would require tripling of the team size. However, the client agreed to only double it owing to the budget crunch. This led to team members not being able to manage the upload of service tag and the audit of upload volume at the same time. Not knowing what to do Chetan reached out to the black belt for support.
The black belt analyzed the process and suggested that a six sigma project be initiated. Subsequently the project team was put together and senior management approvals taken. The problem was defined, measured and analyzed on all the possible aspects. Solutions were developed, but they needed to be tested. Hence a pilot test was initiated to test the solutions. However, the pilot was a failure and the solutions had to be redesigned. The project team got together to understand what went wrong to ensure that they come up with unique solution for the problem resolution. All available alternatives were thoroughly analyzed and studied. This led to implementation of out-of-the-box ideas, which finally led to extraordinary result.
The client appreciated Chetan and the black belt by rewarding them with gift vouchers.
Lessons Learned
- Continuous improvement efforts not only benefit the clients but also help in maintaining and growing the business
- Having a central repository can change the dynamics of a process
- Consistent communication between two parties is essential for continuous improvement