The Virus of Variability (Gurus, Graphs and Delay Attribution) Richard Capper The Universal Improvement Company

Transcription

1 The Virus of Variability (Gurus, Graphs and Delay Attribution) Richard Capper The Universal Improvement Company

2 What I am going to cover (1) Gurus Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Walter Shewhart, Don Wheeler (2) Graphs Run Charts, Histograms and Pareto Charts (3) Delay Attribution via Ishikawa Diagrams

3 Gurus - Dr. W. Edwards Deming If I had to reduce my message to management to just a few words, I d say it all had to do with reducing variation Key points about Dr. Deming: (1) Japan (2) Japanese railways (3) Current fads such a Lean and Six Sigma are based on his work

4 Gurus - Walter Shewhart (1) Dr. Deming was his student (2) The inventor of Statistical Process Control (3) Discovered that there are two distinct types of variation - common and special. Common is always present in the process, special is unusual. The two can be separated out by using Control Charts.

5 Gurus - Don Wheeler (1) Still going strong! (2) Uses the term Process Capability Chart instead of Control Chart. (3) An early step in improvement (or even contract management) is establishing what the current process is capable of. Regrettably, targets make no difference.

6 Graphs - Run Charts (1) The starting place for understanding how your processes are behaving and therefore what they are capable of (2) Typical Run Charts in performance management: Minutes late at destination Number of cancellations per day (3) Adding Control Limits at three Standard Deviations from the mean turns a Run Chart into a Control Chart and separates special from common causes

7 Graphs - Histograms (1) Also known as Frequency Distributions as they show how frequently a particular value on a Run Chart occurs (2) Vary by location, shape and spread (3) Generally underused in Performance Management

8 Graphs - Pareto Charts (1) Answers the questions why late? (Run Chart = how late?) and why cancelled? (Run Chart = how many cancelled?) (2) The graph is based on an important principle adopted from the work of Vilfredo Pareto by Dr. Joseph Juran. This is commonly known as the rule. (3) Helps to distinguish between the Vital Few and the Useful Many (formerly Trivial Many ). (4) Main application in Performance Management is deciding what to work on.

9 A so what? moment (1) You should have a variety of Run Charts (preferably Control Charts), Histograms and Pareto Charts at your disposal if you want to improve performance. (2) Pareto Charts require data about why late? to be available as well as how late? Why late? is trickier to collect. (3) And philosophically, understanding process capability comes before improvement. Setting unrealistic targets just drives odd behaviours.

10 Ishikawa Diagrams (1) Also known as Cause-and-Effect Diagrams (2) Invented by Professor Kaoru Ishikawa in 1943 to investigate impurities in steel at the Kawasaki Steel Works M e th o d s E q u ip m e n t P e o p le E n v iro n m e n t M a te ria ls (3) Ishikawa thinking can help us to categorise causes of delay and, once we have categorised them, they can be paretoed

11 What needs to be in place 1 Processes A sensible performance regime between Authority/commissioner and operators A (joint) Performance Improvement Process driven by senior managers who understand it is their role to drive big cross-functional projects A delay attribution process - delays are codified in real-time and allocated to the Responsible Manager (infrastructure, fleet, operations, external factors etc) Performance data informs the planning process

12 Other industries The same principles apply: Housing: (1) Rent arrears Why? (2) Repairs Why?/What? (3) Voids Why?

13 Delay Attribution (1) This is the jargon term for attributing a delay to a cause. (2) The best Delay Attribution has a well thought-through hierarchy based on Ishikawa thinking - main bones and subbones - and a codification structure that is understood and applied with consistency. (3) The main bones in heavy rail will typically be rolling stock, infrastructure, operations, etc.

14 Delay Attribution (1) We have been working with Queensland Rail and TransLink to produce a Delay Attribution hierarchy suitable for driving improvement. (2) We have been looking for anything similar in bus (help please). (3) In the UK there is a Delay Attribution Board and a Delay Attribution Guide (on-line, google it).

15 Delay Attribution common pitfalls (1) Force majeure thinking: Not my fault Contractually exempt Too difficult - acts of God (back to Japan for a contrast) (2) Those minutes aren t mine, they re yours (3) Inconsistency between delay attributors (round in a big circle to reducing variation) (4) David might have some more

16 Delay Attribution Quote from the DAG For all parties to work together to achieve the core objective of delay attribution - to accurately identify the prime cause of delay to train services for improvement purposes.

17 Reality = what the customers experience My last boss Plan vs. Actual (everything else is irrelevant in the eyes of the customer) Reggie Perrin