GA 548 | Using Continuous Improvement in Your Daily Life with Dhana Hanumayya

So this is something everyone uses PDCA cycle and if done properly, if we give little more focus on the planning, we don't want to overdo it because day to day life, we don't want it to be. Yeah, we want to have fun and adventurous.

Today. I am excited to welcome Donna Hanamaya to the show now. So Donna is actually in Gemba Academy's master black Belt program. And one of the things that our MVP candidates have the opportunity to do, they don't have to do it, but they want to come on and sort of share their continuous improvement story on the podcast. They're free to do that. And so I was super excited when Donna agreed to do that and we had a really fun conversation. So she, she really wanted to sort of talk about how she's used various quality tools or just really just call it continuous improvement tools and in her daily life, not just at the office. I mean, she does talk, you know, how they use these tools that are in her company. But she really broke some of these down on how she uses them in her daily life. For example, like a checklist and, and how she uses that with her kids for their morning routine. And then she got into some other tools that they're using to sort of streamline things and make sure that they're, you know, their life runs smoothly. So I thought it was a really fun way to show how these things that we're doing within continuous improvement, they really know no boundary, they really can and probably should impact all phases of our. So I think it was a lot of fun and I hope you enjoy it. Show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com look for episode 548. Also, be sure to scroll down on the app and go connect with Donna on LinkedIn and thank her for coming onto the show. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Donna, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm good, thank you, Ron. Thanks for having me.

Oh, you're welcome, you're welcome. Where are you calling in from?

I'm in Phoenix, Arizona.

Okay. Okay. A little warm over there right now for you, I guess.

Yes. We are just waiting for the weather to cool down a bit, but not yet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm in Texas and while we're recording this at the beginning of September and, and it was crazy this week and in fact it's much cooler. You know, we've been 100 degrees every day, but it's going to be maybe like even like 76 one day. And I'm like, what is this? I have to get my winter jacket out. You. Well, good stuff. All right. Well, hey, I'm excited to have you on. As you know, Donna, we like to begin all of our episodes with our guests sharing a quote. So do you have one?

Yes, I thought a little bit, you know, which quote shall I go today with? There are many quotes, in fact, which I like, but at this moment, something on top of my mind is a problem well defined is a problem half salt.

Yep, yep. Why do you like that?

When we talk about continuous improvement, the main idea behind continuous improvement is, you know, there will always be a room for improvement. And I think we can say that a problem is the essence of continuous improvement. Like there will always be problems and there will always be room for improvement. And every problem is an opportunity for improvement. And when we talk about problems, defining the problem is the very first step and which is very, very important. If the problem is not well defined, if it is very generic in nature, then we might get lost. And we spend a lot of time understanding the problem itself. So understanding problem is very critical. And a well defined problem sets kind of a path forward on how we are going to tackle this problem. Like for example, if the problem statement is very generic, like, you know, we are seeing increased defect in some product xyz rather than that if we define the problem as in the manufacturing line, so and so part XYZ for the past three months we have seen a 10% increase in the failure rate. So that gives more specifics to the problem and more context to the problem. And it kind of sets a path forward on how we want to go about. And also, especially when we are working with the cross functional teams where everybody is busy with their day to day work, this well defined problem, it kind of motivates the team and it kind of creates that, you know, foundation or first ever step towards the continuous improvement journey. So I think defining the problem is very, very important.

Awesome. Love it. Very good. All right, well, hey Donna, tell us a little bit about about yourself. Tell us about your background, how you got involved in continuous improvement and what you're up to these days.

Yeah, sure. Thanks for asking. So this goes back to 2003, maybe 20 years ago, when I first started my career. In my first job, the company was more into continuous improvement. There was, you know, total quality management in place. And when I started my career in, I think it was during the first year of my career, so I was nominated for Six Sigma Green belt training. And that is when I kind of first introduced to Continuous improvement or Six Sigma DMACC approach. So I kind of loved the subject. One is because I like maths and statistics. That's one of the reason I kind of glued to the subject. But it was more than that when I went back to the manufacturing line. I was a manufacturing engineer at that time and implemented those learnings just to understand the tools and techniques. And the kind of benefits we saw was enormous. It was excellent. And I. My first project was yield improvement of manufacturing line where I implemented Lean and Six Sigma tools. And we saw a lot of benefits. And that project was very well appreciated by the leadership team. And also it was selected for the national convention where my project won the award as well. So that was kind of a first, you know, step how it started and the way things happened, it fell in the right place. And I started using the tools and continuous improvement within the manufacturing line. And in 2008 I went for my black belt certification. And after that I was involved in mentoring and helping green belts to do their projects. And the journey just began. And every step I learned more and more and I appreciated the subject and I've seen the benefits it brought to the organization as well as to me. Like without even realizing one day I realized I'm using these tools even in my day to day life. So that's how my continuous improvement journey started. And now in 2024, I'm doing master black belt with the Gemba Academy. So it's going really good. So it's a continuous process still. I'm into it. Yeah.

How's John doing? Is he a good coach?

He's amazing. He's. Yeah. I am very, very happy to be doing this course with Gemba Academy. And this was exactly what I was looking for. And John, he is amazing. He kind of does, you know, what the coach supposed to do. Pushing to give our best. So.

Yeah, he's so good. Yeah. And he'll, you know, he'll get after you too, if you know, you're not doing what you say you're going to do. I mean, he'll, he'll chase you down if he hasn't heard from you for a little.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. All right. Well, hey, I'm excited for today's topic, Donna. It's maybe an interesting one that, I don't know, we've had a lot of people talk about this kind of thing, but, but I understand that, that you are really passionate about using quality tools in your daily life. So I'm wondering if maybe you could just open up a little Bit with just at a high level like when you say quality tools first of all like what are you talking about? And then yeah maybe some examples of how you're doing that in your life, your personal life.

Yeah sure. So when we talk about quality tools I'm talking about vast majority of the tools we have for years now. For example when we talk about seven basic quality tools, quality control circles we have checklists, Pareto charts and matrix data analysis and PDCA cycle what we use that is one of the foundation for quality management ISO 9001 as well. And the approach, the six sigma approach like DMACC the last phase which is the control phase which is most of the time I have seen worked in about three companies till now. So sometimes it gets ignored like people don't give most more focus on the control phase. So while doing these projects again and again this approach kind of it became a second nature to me. I'm like whatever work I do I make sure the control face is done. And using those tools in my day to day life. For example when we talk about checklist that is very often I use it very often if I have to give some examples. I recently introduced a checklist for my kids or who. Who are like who gets up in the morning who don't even make their bed and then they get going room will be messy. So I kind of made a scoring sheet and a checklist what they have to do only three things just to begin with to I don't want to overwhelm them as well. They're of course they're kids so making bed and then cleaning the floor and then another thing, you know making sure their clothes go back to the washing machine not lying on the floor something three checks and then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday every day. So they're supposed to do this and tick mark before they go to school. So that we are doing it for two weeks now and it's working really well. They're making sure they do it and then I at the end of the day I give them a score how well they do it right. So it kind of my little one, she's 10 year now she thanked me actually she said mama, this is great. Liking it. She said so yeah using this kind of tools and checklist I use it even for my to do activities in the work as well as at home. Like we have this, you know we go to shops and buy stuff. We basically go to three shops every month. That's kind of we. We just buy from their Walmart and then sprouts and then we have Indian grocery stores. And every time my husband will go to shop, he'll forget something and come. I'll. And then I'll forget. Then we keep making that trips once a week, maybe there will be two, three times we go sometimes. So what we did, we pasted a paper on the refrigerator and then we made three columns. And whenever we remember or when I'm cooking, I see something got over. So I just write under the shop name, this is what we have to buy. So at the end of the week, whoever goes to the shop will take a picture of it, go to the shop and buy those things one time. No frequent visits. So these are the simple tools which we kind of implemented. And checklist is amazing. It's a very simple tool. Anybody can use it. And when we are talking of PDCA plan, do check, act, I think it is something everybody uses because even before I knew it is called pdca, I was using it. We kind of in our day to day work, we always try to improve ourselves. And this is how we do it using the PDCA cycle. Maybe many people have not undergone the quality training, so they may not have known it as a PDCA cycle, but we use it. For example, when we go for a tour or a vacation, first step is we plan vacation. And then during the planning stage we think where to go with whom to go and how long the vacation should be and how many places we would like to cover, how many days and where we will go to stay. So all these we do planning, I think everyone does that for a vacation and then do is when actually we go and we enjoy the vacation. And after the vacation we do talk about it. We check how did it go. Like for example, when we recently visited New York in the summer, at the end of the vacation we kind of talk about it. We ask our kids among one week, which day was your favorite or among the six places we visited, which was your favorite. Then we talk like, you know, oh, that place was amazing. But we didn't have much time. We kind of combined four places in one day. Maybe we could have done, you know, in one day this place the other day. So we kind of talk about it and we check what we have done, what can be improved and we take action. If next time we visit the same place, we will take action to incorporate all these learnings. Even if we are going to some other place, then we kind of take this input and build upon that the new idea. So this is something everyone uses PDCA cycle. And if done properly, if we Give little more focus on the planning stage. We don't want to overdo it because day to day life we don't want it to be. Yeah, we want to have fun and adventurous everything. But at the same time we can plan it a little more better to enjoy that vacation. And another tool which is my favorite but I don't use it most often because it takes some amount of time and unless there is a problem which needs this kind of analysis, then only I kind of use it. For example, till now I have used this tool I think three times, not more than that. So it's matrix data analysis. This is when there is kind of a situation where there are a lot of options. And I'm confused and it's a very significant decision of my life. I just don't want to take it on my gut feeling or just by listening to someone. So that is where we use matrix data analysis. So I kind of educated my husband on how to use this tool. He was initially was very reluctant on using these. You know, nobody wants to spend time using tools in their daily life also like we do enough in the company. That's what it, that's the kind of thinking. It's. It's natural. But when we spend days on talking about an issue and not finding a resolution still we are confused, you know, which one to go. And it takes a lot of time. So I kind of educated him. This is the tool. We just have to list down our requirements and the options available and give them weightage to our requirements. So we know which requirement is more critical to us and which we can, we are ready to kind of, you know, negotiate on that and then map it. Map the requirements against the options, give the score and numbers. When we convert our requirements into numbers quantifiable, it makes a lot of sense. Like it's very clear. So we did that recently for our house hunting process when we bought this house, the current house where we are living now it was in 2021 and we know how the housing market was in 2021. Just even though Covid there was a recession or it's called Covid recession. But housing market saw a significant boom in the prices. I think almost we double some of the places the price and it was our like first home which we wanted to buy and we had certain requirements we non negotiable kind of which we didn't wanted to settle on. And also a budget, we didn't want it to cross the budget. And we started you know, kind of keeping an eye on the Zillow but it was so overwhelming. There's a lot of listings, but they were kind of vanishing within minutes. Like today the listing is there, tomorrow it's already there is an offer to that house. So we were like, what to do? And then we went to a real estate agent and then we said all our requirements, filters, everything is set. So thousands of homes, maybe it got reduced to handful, but still we were not able to, you know, visit every house. If we start visiting every house, then we will lose, you know, somebody else might have put offer. So that that was the seller's market, what our realtor called it. Then we did this matrix data analysis. Then we were able to shortlist five homes and among them the highest scorer. We visited that and the same day we put an offer. And then that's where we are living now. So this is like, you know, it saved us a lot of time, effort, stress, and at the same time we made an informed decision. It's not that just we went somewhere. So that's the reason I love using the quality tools in our daily life.

Yeah, so I think the tool that you're just describing there, we in Gemba Academy library, we call it cause and effect matrix, which some people call that cause and effect sometimes as a Ishikawa diagram. But in our language we use the and so yeah, like you said, it's like a spreadsheet where you like, you know, if you had a process map, you could take all the inputs from your process and list those down, up the up, up and down. And then you could. We want to rank them on how important those inputs are, we think against some, maybe some output variables. Right. And so we list those on the top and we say, well, this output variable is quality. It's very important. So it's a 10.

10. Right.

And then. And so you take the first input and you say, hey, how important is this one to quality? Say, oh, it's very important. It's a 10. So then 10 times 10 is 100. Right? So yeah, so I think this is the tool. Right, but we've actually used, we have actually used the same tool, my wife and I for like we haven't done it for a few years. But if like planning vacation, like where'd it go? Right. You told about earlier. But you could say, wow, Disney World and you know, whatever. And you list out the different things and what do we want this. And then the kids can get involved, like what's important to you, you know, on the vacation? And, and so you have all your output variables on the Top. And then you go through and you rank each one of them and then you say, well, this one is winning against all of our requirements. Right. And it's a beautiful way, right. Of sort of taking. It's still, still. I guess there's still some opinion, right? Like if you don't have exact facts or exact data, you know, But I think that's pretty important, right? But it's a powerful tool, right, to, to help you sort of take even people's opinions and sort of organize them. Right. And takes all the emotion out, so.

Yes, very true.

Yeah, good stuff, good stuff. I'm wondering, like, how did you. Like, so you've used it a lot in your, in your personal life. You've given some examples. Like, do you remember, like, what was the very first thing that you tried? Was it like checklists or something like that? Like, what was the first thing that you used in your, in your sort of your, your family life?

The first thing I used was a checklist.

Yeah.

So I was involved in this ISO9001 certification in the manufacturing line. So it was, you know, how we started implementing ISO and the pdca, how systematic it. And the same thing, like, I remember it was during my sister's marriage in India. The marriage is a big thing, you.

Know, long time, right? How long does it take the marriage?

A week.

A week?

Yeah. There are different functions every day.

Like you go to sleep or did you just stay off or is it like during the day?

Yeah, it depends. Like, different states. Some states the marriage happens in the night, so whole night will be awake. Some states it's like it runs late in the night for a couple of days and then we can sleep in the nights. So during her marriage, it's. Especially when it comes to a girl side, the workload will be more. So my parents were very stressed. Both my, my mom and dad, they were very stressed. And guest list was huge, like around 600 people wedding. And this is normal, I'm saying people have more than thousands. And then, you know, inviting everyone and making sure there's a. It's at least for two days. We have to make sure breakfast, lunch, dinner, everything is served on time for all the people. And there are other people involved, right? Like decoration person, the music guy and then the priest. So and we have to make sure everybody is there on time and payment is made for everyone on time. So there I used the checklist like, you know, listing all the activities and then what time, whom to go and what are the things required and reaching out to everyone and, and we had this envelope where everybody's name was written, whoever payment has to be done. And there were multiple rooms, like we took for taking care of guests, so making sure keys are in the proper place, all those things. So that helped a lot. Like my mother, she was very stressed, but because of this checklist, I was taking care of all these, you know, I was just telling them this. Who has to do what when? So that helps a lot. It was very systematic and neatly done.

The problem, the problem probably was, though, your mom would say, go ask Donna. She knows, right? Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. I'm wondering maybe as we wrap things up, if you had any maybe some advice to people who were not just necessarily in their personal life, but just maybe professional life, just life in general, sort of getting started using some of these tools. We spent a lot of time talking about checklists, but are there any other, like, pieces of advice that you could give people for how they could be successful using these tools?

Yes. Like, in my personal experience, it had helped me in a way. The as more and more we use in our companies or job, the tools, it's not just, you know, we do it and we forget. It kind of become like a second nature to us. And the approach is more important rather than the tools. It's like I said, matrix data analysis. Although it's so good, I have used it only three times till now. And checklist, we kind of use it every day because it's so simple to use it. So we have to make sure it's not the tools which matters here. It is the approach. Whenever there is something to be done, how well we plan it, how good we define it, and then after doing the work, how do we make sure it is sustained? So this kind of culture, once it is within us, when we start thinking this approach, it kind of happens in all our work. Wherever we go, it improves us, as you know, we will be like a better person than what we were before. As more and more we adopt these learnings. And once it becomes like a second nature to us, even at jobs, it's me, right? Whenever there is a problem, this is how we behave. We solve it and we make sure it doesn't occur again. So it kind of makes us stand or it kind of, you know, makes us look different or a better person than others. This because we are doing things more systematically and simpler ways. Right. These are not complicated. These. Using these approaches and these tools, they make our life more simpler than what it used to be. It's not the complexity we are talking here. If we can represent or if we can present complex problems in a simple way, then we can say that we have learned something from these tools. Yeah.

Wonderful. Great job. Awesome. Well, this has been a fun conversation. Donna, if folks wanted to connect with with you personally, what's the the best way? LinkedIn. Something like that.

Yes, LinkedIn. You can find me in LinkedIn as Daniel Lakshmi H. So we can share the link?

Yeah, we'll put the link below.

Yeah, that's the best way.

Okay, wonderful, Wonderful. All right, well, I'm sure John has some homework for you to go do some master black belt training, so I'll let you go now. But thank you for coming on. This has been a lot of fun chatting.

Thank you so much, John.

All right, take care. Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 Lean and Six Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.