Brighter Minds Publishing

Most bosses spend too much of their time in meetings. This happens because executives respond to problems by calling meetings to fix them. And when the meetings fail to produce results, they call more meetings. In some companies, people have even called meetings to figure out why their meetings didn’t work.

Rather than watch your boss trudge off to an endless schedule of meetings, here are things you can do to protect your boss’s valuable time.

1) When someone calls to schedule a meeting for your boss, ask for the agenda. If there is no agenda, check if your boss wants to attend. Lack of an agenda is the number one cause of bad meetings. Ideally, your boss would insist on having an agenda because time is money.

If the caller replies that your boss will receive an agenda at the meeting, state that your boss wants to see the agenda at least a day before the meeting. This gives your boss time to prepare and avoids being ambushed by surprises.

2) Ask “What are the goals for this meeting?” or “What results do you want to have by the end of the meeting?” A meeting without goals will lack direction, which can be as deadly as no agenda.

3) Ask “What is my boss’s role in the meeting?” or “Why do you want my boss to attend?” Many junior employees invite executives to their meetings because it makes them seem important. They also use this as an opportunity to delegate work upwards, show off, and ask their boss to make decisions. Vague replies (such as, “Oh, we just want hear what your boss has to say”) suggest lazy planning.

If your boss is being invited to “find out what everyone is doing” check if your boss would prefer to receive a copy of the minutes instead. It takes much less time to read minutes than attend a meeting.

If your boss has an important role in a minor part of a meeting, ask if your boss can attend only that part of the meeting. Suggest that they schedule your boss’ participation at the beginning so your boss can be on time for this part and then leave after contributing.

4) Ask “How should my boss prepare for the meeting?” This helps your boss do well and avoids being surprised. If the preparation requires extensive work, check with your boss if the schedule makes sense. Also, check if others will be prepared. Unprepared participants always waste time. If necessary, revise the scope of the meeting or schedule it for a later date to allow adequate preparation.

5) Ask “What should my boss bring?” You want to make sure that your boss has whatever is needed for effective participation. You also want to know what is needed because you may have to help obtain it. If the resources are unavailable, suggest alternatives.

6) Ask who else will be there. This will help your boss anticipate what might happen. And in some cases you may find it useful to call some of the other participants to survey their expectations, concerns, and support for the issues on the agenda.

7) Finally, make sure that you collect details such as the starting time, duration, and location. Obtain a map and directions when needed.

As an administrative assistant you work as an important partner with your boss. Thus, you may want to share this article and use it as the basis for how you can work together, making sure that your boss attends the right meetings for the right reasons with the right preparation.

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is the application of Six Sigma principles to the design of products and their manufacturing and support processes. Whereas Six Sigma by definition focuses on the production phase of a product, DFSS focuses on research, design, and development phases. DFSS combines many of the tools that are used to improve existing products or services and integrates the voice of the customer and simulation methods to predict new process and product performance.

DFSS can be compared to DMAIC (Design, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) and often the acronym DMADV (Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, Verify) is used to describe the strategy of DFSS. The precise phases or steps of a DFSS methodology are not universally defined. Most organizations will implement DFSS to suit their business, industry, and culture. DFSS methodology, instead of the DMAIC methodology, should be used when:

* A product or process is not in existence at your company and one needs to be developed
* The existing product or process exists and has been optimized (using either DMAIC or not) and still doesn’t meet the level of customer specification or six sigma level
DFSS is a way to implement the Six Sigma methodology as early in the product or service life cycle as possible. It is a strategy toward extraordinary ROI by designing to meet customer needs and process capability. DFSS can produce the same order of magnitude in financial benefits as DMAIC. But it also greatly helps an organization innovate, exceed customer expectations, and become a market leader.

DFSS is the Six Sigma approach to product design—namely, designing products that are resistant to variation in the manufacturing process. Using DFSS means designing quality into the product from the start. You are preventing wasteful variation before it happens, thus being able to identify and correct problems early when the solution costs are less. A successful DFSS implementation requires the same ingredients as any other Six Sigma project: a significant commitment and leadership from the top, planning that identifies and establishes measurable program goals and timeline, and the training and involvement of everyone.

Planning for DFSS requires collecting the necessary information that will allow for error free production of defect-free products and processes that satisfy the customer profitably. DFSS attempts to predict how the designs under consideration will behave and to correct for variation prior to it occurring. That means understanding the real needs of your customers and translating those needs into vital technical characteristics of the product and ultimately into critical to quality (CTQ) characteristics of the product and process. You can then use design of experiments (DOE) to develop a robust design that optimizes efficiency and reduces defects.

Valid and reliable metrics to monitor the progress of the project are established early in the project, during the Measure phase if using DMADV. Key inputs are prioritized to establish a short list to study in more detail. With a prioritized list of inputs in hand, the DFSS team will determine the potential ways the process could go wrong and take preemptive action to mitigate or prevent those failures. Through analysis, the DFSS team can determine the causes of the problem that needs improvement and how to eliminate the gap between existing performance and the desired level of performance. This involves discovering why defects are generated by identifying the key variables that are most likely to create process variation. Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) and Anticipatory Failure Determination (AFD) can be used for both the design of the product and the design of the process.

DFSS provides a structured way to constructively use the information learned from these analyses. Armed with real data produced by the DFSS process, you can develop competent manufacturing processes and choose processes that are capable of meeting the design requirements. Further analysis can verify and validate that the product design will meet the quality targets. This can be accomplished through peer reviews, design reviews, simulation and analysis, qualification testing, or production validation testing.

The benefits of DFSS are more difficult to quantify and are more long-term. It can take over six months after the launch of the new product before you will begin to see the true measure of the project improvements. However, the eventual return on investment can be profound. This is especially true when the organization can use the DFSS project as a template for fundamental changes in the way it develops new products and processes across the organization.