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40 The PCB Magazine • April 2016 one of the pillars of Six Sigma, and may help you answer questions like: • How do you know you have improved your process? • Have you seen better results since last week, month, or year? • Do you still maintain the results you have achieved? • Did you or your team help your company to achieve its goals? • How much money has your company saved? DMAIC methodology gathers several tools we all have heard about, such as: Pareto anal- ysis, value stream mapping, failure mode and effect analysis, statistical process control, and project charter, to cite some. But it goes further, creating a meticulous path to execute the activi- ties presented on the method, which results in correct conclusions of what must be done. Define Everything starts here, and it is said that if you start well, you may finish well. At this point, it is very important to clear- ly DEFINE what are the goals and scope of the project. Remember, the methodology is not only about process improvement, but improving your company's outcome. So it is necessary to make it clear that the goal you set here must be in accordance with your company's goals. Sometimes, engineers (myself included) want to make excellent that which may not be financially good for the company. If you allow me to offer a piece of advice, keep the focus on the golden pot: customer and money. And al- ways discuss your project with top management. According to Vicente Falconi Campos, a well-known Brazilian business consultant and writer, a target consists of a management goal, a value, and a deadline. Keep it in mind. Here are some tools that may guide you through the definition of your goals: Project charter; financial analysis; voice of the customer (VOC); and value stream mapping (VSM). Measure Data is as essential to Six Sigma as the air we breathe. If you want to know what you have improved since last semester, you need to know where you were last semester. Thus, work hard to establish the baseline and the targets for each problem. If you don't have any data, or just have poor data, you will need to plan how to collect new data. Statistical tools and techniques are widely used on this step: histograms, control charts, boxplots, and Pareto analysis, along with VSM and measurement system analysis (MSA). Analyze "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." — Abraham Lincoln foCusing on What matters most! Figure 2: Tools, methods and business strategy.