Six Sigma Project Selection

Project selection is a testimony to a leader’s role in successfully aligning the broad objectives of the organization with its long term strategies. A project selection committee or group can be formed to screen and select projects. It can include Champions, Master Black Belts, Black Belts, and important executive supporters.

The project selection committee sets the criteria to select the projects. The project selection criteria are framed on the basis of the key factors that define the business case and business need of an organization. After selecting the projects, the project selection committee matches the projects selected with teams assigned to execute them.

Project selection is the very first step in any Six Sigma initiative. The Six Sigma project type often dictates which Lean Six Sigma methodology you’re going to want to select to complete the project.

Key criteria for project selection

• Impact to customer – When addressing the impact to customer, you need to ask if customers will stay with you or buy more of your products and services as a result.
• Overall benefits – The overall benefits are where you use the tools for Voice of the Business, and Voice of the Customer, SIPOC diagramming, and other techniques to get at understanding the overall process and the overall benefits. You need to identify what are the benefits for everybody involved with this process.
• Sponsorship – You need to have a motivated and engaged sponsor to provide top management to support executive oversight, provide resources, and a number of other factors in order to be successful.
• Availability of data – Six Sigma is a data-based approach so it’s critical that you define and measure your entire process. If you have no data, you are unlikely to succeed. You may need to make data collection one of the key steps you could do before you can even charter the project properly.
• Impact on quality – When you think about the quality impact on quality, are you able to reduce variation or improve the first-time quality?
• Time line – The time that you spend on a project is another vital component. Usually you want to get something meaningful done inside of a few months to a year.
• Resource availability – Do you have the right kinds of resources to support this project? Who needs to be involved? How much time do you need them to dedicate? Do you have the right funding to support success on this project? Are there several key things to consider around the steps in the process?

There are four step in the project selection process:

• shortlist project opportunities
• determine selection criteria for the project
• prioritize project opportunities
• select the best project opportunity