C H A P T E R 5 10 “Soft” Tools You Will Need on a Six Sigma Team. At first, these tools may present a challenge as team members both learn these tools and apply them to their actual work. | P TER 10 Soft Tools You Will Need on a Six Sigma Team In Chapter 4 we reviewed 10 technical tools that any Six Sigma project team member is expected to use in their work of applying DMAIC. At first these tools may present a challenge as team members both learn these tools and apply them to their actual work. After the first or second use of the tool confidence grows in their usage. Technical tool usage is not the only area of expertise a team member must possess. There are several tools that are considered non-technical in nature that a team member must learn. Sometimes these non-technical tools are called soft tools because virtually none of them have any mathematics or statistics associated with them. While this may be good news to those on Six Sigma teams that have some degree of math phobia in reality these soft tools can be challenging. The challenge of the soft tools that we are about to discuss in Chapter 5 centers around the fact that so many of these tools are applied to people in the organization. Thus it is important that Six Sigma team members learn them 89 90 SIX SIGMA FOR EVERYONE carefully and apply them diligently and tactfully. Without them the chances of Six Sigma improvement reduce dramatically. With them success is just around the corner. The 10 tools covered in Chapter 5 can be divided into two major categories. Five of the 10 tools focus around the acceptance of the Six Sigma project team s solutions. The other five tools focus on how the team conducts its work. The Concept of Acceptance In our second Six Sigma book Making Six Sigma Last Managing the Balance between Cultural and Technical Change we discussed a simple equation that contributes to the success of Six Sigma Q x A E Q refers to the quality of the technical elements of Six Sigma whether it be the strategic component that is the responsibility of management or the tactical elements of Six Sigma projects which is the responsibility of the Six Sigma team members. A in the formula .
