Help Manual

Contents






Sigma Magic Help Version 18

Waste Analysis

Overview

Waste Analysis Worksheets can identify and document waste in any process. It can help you focus your efforts on the most critical wastes first. It is a structured approach to help you identify and quantify the waste. This tool can help identify wastes in a structured fashion since each step is analyzed for the wastes, and if they were done randomly, some wastes may be missed. The eight wastes, according to Lean, are:
  • Transportation
  • Inventory
  • Motion
  • Waiting
  • Over-production
  • Over-processing
  • Defects
  • Skills
To add this tool to your workbook, click on Lean and then select Waste Analysis.

Inputs

Click on Analysis Setup to open the menu options for this tool.

Setup

A sample screenshot of the setup menu is shown below.
Input Dialog
1
Num Steps: Specify the number of steps in your process. This information is used to reformat your worksheet and create a table for data entry. Note that any data below this table will be cleared.
2
Chart Type: Specify the type of graph you would like to generate. You can specify this option by clicking on the caption. The various options are:
OptionDescription
Bar ChartShow a bar chart for the audit results.
Pie ChartShow a pie chart for the audit results.
Radar ChartShow a radar chart for the audit results.
3
View Example: Click on this button to open the example file. You can view the example to get an idea of how to fill out this tool, or you can use the example as a starting point and modify it to meet your project needs.
4
Help Button: Click on this button to open the help file on this topic.
5
Cancel Button: Click on this button to exit without saving any changes.
6
Create Design: If this is your first time using this template, click this button to format the worksheet template. You can also update the worksheet format any time, but remember that you may lose any data entered on this worksheet. Once you are happy with the worksheet template layout, you must enter any required data on the worksheet. When the data entered into the worksheet is complete, you can click on Analysis Setup and then Compute Outputs to generate analysis results.
7
Analyze Design: Click on this button to save all changes and compute the outputs for this analysis. Review the results of your analysis and make changes to your inputs if required to update analysis results.
A sample screenshot of the worksheet is shown below: Outputs Break up each step in the process on the worksheet and identify the wastes. Here are the steps to fill out the worksheet.
NumDescription
1Specify the number and the name of the process step.
2Write down this process step's value-added and non-value-added times. You may want to study this process step's time to determine the times. The time will be value-adding if the customer is willing to pay for this step. Some steps may only have a value add time, some may have a non-value add time, and some may have a combination of value add and non-value add time.
3Next, identify the wastes observed in this process step on a scale of 0-10. This rating is used to apportion the NVA time to each of these wastes. By making the same scale for all the wastes, comparing and prioritizing them would be possible. For example, if the NVA time is 10 minutes and only one waste is identified, no matter what rating you give this step, the entire 10 minutes is assigned to that waste. If two wastes are identified for that step, the ratings are used to apportion the total time of 10 minutes between these two wastes. If the ratings are equal, 5 minutes is assigned to the first waste and 5 minutes to the second. In most process steps, you may only observe one type of waste in each process step, but in general, it may be possible for a single step to have multiple wastes. If there is too much waste in one process step, you may want to consider breaking the process step down into multiple sub-processes so that each sub-process has only a limited amount of waste.
4Finally, add any comments for each process step (optional).

Charts

You will see the following dialog box if you click the Charts button. Charts
1
Title: The system will automatically pick a title for your chart. However, if you want to override that with your title, you can specify a title for your chart here. Note that this input is optional.
2
Sub Title: The system will automatically pick a subtitle for your chart. However, if you want to override that with your subtitle, specify a subtitle for your chart here. Note that this input is optional.
3
X Label: The system will automatically pick a label for the x-axis. However, if you would like to override that with your label for the x-axis, you can specify a different label here. Note that this input is optional.
4
Y Label: The system will automatically pick a label for the y-axis. However, if you would like to override that with your label for the y-axis, you can specify a different label here. Note that this input is optional.
5
X Axis: The system will automatically pick a scale for the x-axis. However, if you would like to override that with your values for the x-axis, you can specify them here. The format for this input is to determine the minimum, increment, and maximum values separated by a semi-colon. For example, if you specify 10;20, the minimum x-axis scale is set at 10, and the maximum x-axis scale is set at 20. If you specify 10;2;20, then, in addition to minimum and maximum values, the x-axis increment is set at 2. Note that this input is currently disabled, and you cannot change this setting.
6
Y Axis: The system will automatically pick a scale for the y-axis. However, if you would like to override that with your values for the y-axis, you can specify them here. The format for this input is to determine the minimum, increment, and maximum values separated by a semi-colon. For example, if you specify 10;20, the minimum y-axis scale is set at 10, and the maximum y-axis is set at 20. If you specify 10;2;20, then, in addition to minimum and maximum values, the y-axis increment is set at 2. Note that this input is optional.
7
Horizontal Lines: You can specify the values here to add a few extra horizontal reference lines to your chart. The format for this input is numeric values separated by semi-colon. For example, if you specify 12;15, two horizontal lines are plotted at Y = 12 and Y = 15, respectively. Note that this input is optional.
8
Vertical Lines: You can specify the values here to add a few extra vertical reference lines to your chart. The format for this input is numeric values separated by semi-colon. For example, if you specify 2;5, two vertical lines are plotted at X = 2 and X = 5, respectively. Note that this input is optional.

Verify

If you click the Verify button, the software will perform some checks on the data you entered. A sample screenshot of the dialog box is shown in the figure below. Verify The software checks if you have correctly specified the input options and entered the required data on the worksheet. The results of the analysis checks are listed on the right. If the checks are passed, they are shown as green-colored checkmarks. If the verification checks fail, they are shown as a red-colored cross. If the verification checks result in a warning, they are shown in the orange exclamation mark. Finally, any checks that are required to be performed by the user are shown as blue info icons.
1
Item: The left-hand side shows the major tabs and the items checked within each section
2
Status: The right-hand side shows the status of the checks.
3
Overall Status: The overall status of all the checks for the given analysis is shown here. The overall status check shows a green thumps-up sign if everything is okay and a red thumps-down sign if any checks have not passed. Note that you cannot proceed with generating analysis results for some analyses if the overall status is not okay.

Outputs

Click on Compute Outputs to update the outputs. The analysis will determine the total value-added time, break up the non-value-added time between the different wastes, and create a chart of these results in the Graph area. A % VA time is also reported on this graph. Outputs The graph will help you identify the amount of VA vs. NVA time for this process and also help quantify which wastes have been observed in the process along with the relative magnitude of the wastes as prioritization. Do note that in a lean journey, our objective is to identify and eliminate all the wastes observed in a process. This graph will only help you prioritize the wastes so you can go after the most critical wastes first. If the analysis is completed successfully, the following message box is displayed: outputs 2

Notes

Here are a few notes regarding this analysis:
  • Each of the eight wastes is rated vs. the process step on a 0-10 scale. The ratings are just a way to quantify which waste is more important than others. Changing the scale from 0-10 to 0-1 or 0-3 or any other scale would not change this analysis since they are proportionately used to scale the NVA time. Using a wider range of 0-10 can provide greater opportunities for increased resolution of the NVA values.

Examples

The following examples are in the software's Examples folder.
  • For the process shown in the attached file, create a waste analysis and identify and prioritize the eight wastes (Waste Analysis 1.xlsx).



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