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October 2015 • The PCB Magazine 55 mapping is most often completed as part of a Kaizen Event, a 3–5 day workshop where a cross functional team from within the compa- ny works on a product family within a specific process. The objective is focused on redesign- ing the process or production area to better meet the company's goals, which of course ultimately come back to improving customer satisfaction. To prepare for VSM the first task is to de- fine the scope and goal for the Kaizen team and identify a few key performance indicators that can be used to measure progress against that goal. The scope will identify the specific value stream selected and also clearly define why this area has been selected. The team should already be thinking about how they can improve the key performance indicators. In preparation for the value stream mapping, consider plant safety, quality (internal au - dits, rejects, scrap, and rework), overall per- formance, delivery performance, throughput time, productivity, WIP inventory, finished good inventory, in-process materials and raw materials, as an example. Find the actual data on customer demand, output, work time, throughput time, work in process, and back- log. Questions that should be asked include: What are the top five production problems, and what are the top three quality problems? Make sure that you have the current informa- tion on customer demand, any recent audit re- sults, and all scrap and rework data in the area that will be mapped. In Part 2 we will look further into value stream mapping and the use of lean six sigma tools through some examples of projects with goals to reduce cycle time by removing process waste. PCB PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF LEAN SIx-SIGMA TO DRIvE CyCLE TIME REDUCTION, PART 1 FeATure Figure 4: Eight types of waste. Kathy Nargi-Toth is vice president of Quality and Technology at ncaB.