Collectively, we should have recognized that many of the areas being measured were not yet operationally under control and predictable. Many of the teams had skipped the first three DMAIC steps—define, measure, analyze—in an attempt to operate at the Improve stage. They ended up chasing blips on a graph with not much to show for their effort. We should have—politely and constructively!—recommended they do the necessary legwork to convert their metrics from noise to signal.
