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Continuous
improvement is universally recognized as a requirement
to improve the performance of customer fulfillment,
demand planning, distribution and manufacturing processes.
In order for process improvement to be effective, however,
teams need information — targeted information about
specific problems — to understand why a process
goes astray.
Blue Agave's Active Continuous Improvement
(ActiveCI) provides process improvement
teams with the information needed to turn Six Sigma
efforts from art into science. By analyzing contextual
information captured at the time a problem occurs, ActiveCI
enables teams to identify root causes and take action
for future improvement. By providing focused information
and relevant, supporting facts, ActiveCI raises
process improvement practices to a new level.
Analyzing Exceptions to Understand Root Cause
ActiveCI takes advantage of Blue Agave's
ActiveResponse exception management capabilities,
which detect exceptions and provide users with the information
needed to help them quickly respond. The output of ActiveResponse's
exception management is a valuable repository of APM-stored
exceptions and related, focused information, which ActiveCI
leverages.
ActiveCI analyzes exceptions by customer,
product, distribution channel, or other relevant dimensions
to help identify common attributes associated with specific
problems. The application captures and presents relevant
context about each exception, including:
- products
- orders
- customers
- expected supply
- planned demand
- suppliers
- logistics
Recognizing that the potential causes of exceptions
may lie in related upstream events, ActiveCI
correlates events across exceptions to identify common
elements associated with process problems. For example,
a stock-out of a product that affects a major customer
may have been caused by a change in production plans.
The ability to consistently evaluate related information
that will help to trace an exception back to the possible
events that caused the problem is a unique and powerful
feature.
ActiveCI provides powerful visual analysis
tools such as Pareto charts and histograms to help teams
identify common patterns associated with problems in
their processes. By analyzing exceptions every week,
month or business quarter, ActiveCI strongly
supports efforts to identify and eliminate causes of
problems rather than simply reacting to symptoms.
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