Thirukkural – FMEA, Elimination of MUDA

A great Management and Productive thought of Thirukkural
Verse :
EthirathAk  kAkkum Arivinaarku Illai
Athira Varuvuthor Noy
Direct meaning:
Those people of capable intellect who can feel the imminent pains and have plans to tackle them,  know not of any fear from sufferings.
Lean Six Sigma inference
A Six Sigma methodology foresees and expects pain points and adresses them with fall back [...]

MUDA 7 – Defects

Defects. Production of defective parts or firefighting to correct the defects. Rework, scrap, replacement, and inspection mean wasteful handling, time, and effort.
Defects in software development costs heavily to the vendors and customers alike.  Detecting the defects early by using Agile approaches likes TDD, Pair programming, Extreme programming, having defect prevention plan in place are [...]

MUDA 6 – Motion

Motion (Unnecessary movement). Spending extra time and wasted motion of employees during the course of their work to find relevant information about the tasks and projects, such as looking for, reaching for, or stacking parts, tools, etc.
In software development projects spread-out-teams in different locations within the organization should be avoided. If Dev, Testing and support [...]

MUDA 5 – Over processing

Over processing. Taking more steps than necessary to accomplish tasks. Using poor Quality Tools, incompatible software and hardware result in poor product design, producing defective product outcomes.
In software development Over processing normally results in requirements gold plating, design gold plating, etc. This means taking extra steps and sequences when the task /activity in hand can [...]

MUDA-4 Excess inventory

MUDA-4 Excess inventory

Excessive storage of raw material, assembly line work products, finished goods waiting for shipments and the associated storage costs for all these situations form the MUDA 4 – Excess inventory. It can include defects and downtime issues also.
Excess Inventory in Software development
Code is waiting for review and testing for long – typical [...]

MUDA 3 – Unnecessary Transport or conveyance

 
MUDA – 3  Transportation

Moving parts, components and other materials between location to location often with less planning leading to wastage of time and effort on the part of the workers and the task being done.
In software development  sending artifacts between different people and getting this reviewed, approved and commented and implementing the feedbacks are considered [...]

MUDA 2 – Waiting

 
Waiting  :
Agile is based on Lean Principles and best addresses this MUDA – Waiting .
In manufacturing environment a worker waiting to get other parts ready before he can go ahead with his component machining. Waiting for tools, material supply or simply waiting for any resources before the worker could start or continue working on his [...]

MUDA1 – Overproduction

Unstated and not needed items in manufacturing parlance. Manufacturing Goods or products that are not required currently are never would be.
When applied to software parlance unnecessary features that are gold plated and never were part of customer requirement. Also some of the features that are not required currently and developed by the project team [...]

Apply Parkinson’s Law, Remove MUDA

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion – Parkinson’s Law.
Parkinson’s Law stated as early as 1950’s had a great flavor of Removing MUDA. The demand for completing a work by a resource will try to occupy total time available (supply) for the resource making the work inefficient. It means if 100 hours [...]

Audit a cup or coffee?

Audit  a cup or coffee?
Fundamental drivers of a project success like Budget, Schedule and Quality should be kept in mind during auditing a project.
While Budget is not a direct audit element, Schedule and Quality are.  
If   Y = Success of project
X = combination of   ‘x’s like Budget, Quality and Schedule
Y = F (Budget, Quality, Schedule)
While [...]