How to Identify a Continuous improvement project?

Black belts must consider both ‘voice of the customer’ and ‘voice of business’ before selecting a problem statement for a project.

If both customers and business are talking about the same issue then creating a project around that is an easy choice.

Customer VOC and Business VOC can be collected either by talking to them in the reviews or through feedback forms, interviews, surveys and through some other sources.

It is a step by step process by which an output indicator can be identified and worked upon as a project.

For Voice of the Customer

Voice of the customer -> Customer Issue -> Critical Customer requirement -> Critical to Quality

Similar process is to be followed to capture Voice of the business

Voice of the business -> Business Issue - > Critical business requirement -> Critical to Process

If the common problem is identified it could be the goal of the project.

Let us consider one example:

 An international bank is facing challenges in the international wire transfer business.  Find below the VOC and VOB chart for the project identification.

The Goal of the project is to reduce the international wire transfer cycle time from 72 Hours to 24 hours by Nov 16.