Week 3 Developing Dashboards

In week 2's lecture, we have gone through Balanced Scored card. Both Balanced Score and Dashboard are a visualization tool, which will alert the user on business performance.

What are the differences between the two of them?

In week 3 Ms Chong has gone though the difference between Dashboard and Balanced Scorecard.


When comparing with Scorecard, Dashboard is more for the use of supervisors and operators where the information is very detail and the usage is more frequent (Daily) mainly for the monitoring of daily operational jobs. Dashboard is more for the usage of managers and the information shown on Dashboard is more summarized.

In this Lecture we have also learn to develop Dashboard

1. Limit dashboards to critical few KPIs
2. Get results quickly
3. Dashboards are just part of the culture

What is Six Sigma?

In a simple explanation, six sigma is to improve customer services and reduce costs.

One of the key principles of Six Sigma is DMAIC

The DMAIC project methodology has five phases:

1. Define the problem, the voice of the customer, and the project goals, specifically.
2. Measure key aspects of the current process and collect relevant data.
3. Analyze the data to investigate and verify cause-and-effect relationships. Determine what the relationships are, and attempt to ensure that all factors have been considered. Seek out root cause of the defect under investigation.
4. Improve or optimize the current process based upon data analysis using techniques such as design of experiments, poka yoke or mistake proofing, and standard work to create a new, future state process. Set up pilot runs to establish process capability.
5. Control the future state process to ensure that any deviations from target are corrected before they result in defects. Control systems are implemented such as statistical process control, production boards, and visual workplaces and the process is continuously monitored.

Dashboard are critical to many of the DMAIC stages and act as an alert for process variation

Under Six Sigma there are two project methodologies

1. DMAIC is used for projects aimed at improving an existing business process.
2. DMADV is used for projects aimed at creating new product or process designs

Detail information can be found in this article

Business Process

Business process is a series of related activities that "flow" though an organisation. Problem facing by the functional working are:

• Bottlenecks
• Repetition
• Bureaucracy
• No ownership
• Management frustration
• Too many steps
• Customer forgotten
• Opportunities for error or even corruption

We can improve a process by using a tool call the process mapping. Process mapping is a tool that is used to understand, analyse and document processes and activities in an organisation and assist in identifying opportunities for improvement.

Some advantage of process mapping

• Increases understanding of the work process
• Provides understanding of resource allocation
• Documents training procedures
• Tracks workflow
• Increases staff awareness

Cross-Functional Flowcharts - 'Swim Lanes'

I like to recommend the article as it provide a step by step guide of creating a Cross-Functional Flowcharts. It is very simple to understand and straight to the point.

I like to share this video on creating Cross-Functional Flowcharts, I think it will be a good recap on what we have learned during lap lesson.

Thats all I want to share for this week.
Cheers~