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Using Crystal Ball In Lean Six Sigma And Design For Six Sigma Programs

ORACLE DATA SHEET

USING CRYSTAL BALL

IN LEAN SIX SIGMA AND
DESIGN FOR SIX SIGMA
PROGRAMS







Whether you’re designing an engine or perfecting a process,


efficiency is key—and you rely on your Lean Six Sigma or Design for

Six Sigma practice to get you there. But if you’re only basing your

analysis on hard data—not on the variation inherent in any

As a powerful set of add-on
manufacturing, engineering, or service process—you’re only getting
tools, Crystal Ball software lets
you turn your engineering and
halfway there. Oracle’s Crystal Ball takes you the rest of the way,
process spreadsheet models
allowing you to use simulation, modeling, optimization, and
into dynamic analytical tools.

forecasting to predict and reduce the effects of variation.
KEY FEATURES
• User-defined specification
Crystal Ball in Six Sigma
limits for each forecast
• Views of simulation-based
To succeed, Six Sigma programs must combine a tight focus with the right people
capability metrics
and the best tools—and when it comes to software, the best tools are the ones that
• Split view forecast charts
streamline your journey to profitability. Crystal Ball is one such tool.
(allowing graphs and tables to
be viewed together)
As a suite of Microsoft Excel add-ins, Crystal Ball software works to turn your
• Data Analysis tool for
existing engineering and process spreadsheet models into dynamic analytical tools
capability analysis of data
• Wide selection of example
that help you identify and control the negative effects of variation throughout your
models
Six Sigma projects.
• Crystal Ball Process
Capability Guide (with
Six Sigma applications of Crystal Ball include
tutorials)
•
Design development and optimization

KEY BENEFITS
•
Tolerance and reliability analyses
• Big picture analysis
•
Project selection
(accounting for variations in
systems and process)
•
Process simulation (especially important when historical data is lacking)
• Identification of key business
drivers (through sensitivity
analysis)
Crystal Ball in Design for Six Sigma
• Early insights (via modeling
Because testing on physical models can be prohibitively expensive, Crystal Ball is
and simulation)
particularly valuable in Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) practices, providing designers
• Identification of optimal
with easy access to simulation and optimization techniques that help them predict
solutions (accounting for
variation and constraints)
capability, pinpoint critical-to-quality factors, and explore design alternatives.
• Easily communicated results
(via interactive charts, graphs,
Engineers use “design by analysis” and simulation to estimate data, improve designs
and reports)
and uncover defects before products are built—a process Crystal Ball facilitates by

helping them identify, test, and control how the input (X) variation affects the output
(Y). The result is better designs, which lead to overall savings.
In the end, customers receive robust products and processes, and get to market fast

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ORACLE DATA SHEET

while avoiding the costly consequences of bad design.
Applying Crystal Ball to Your Six Sigma Projects
Whether you’re looking to remove variation from a process or to establish new
process or product capabilities, Crystal Ball provides tools critical for your analysis.
The following sections describe how you can apply Crystal Ball across an entire Six
Sigma or DFSS project.
Define
By allowing you to consider the uncertain costs and success rates of a project’s
initial phases, Crystal Ball can help you to understand the potential impacts of these
variables on customer satisfaction and profitability.
As you get your project up and running, you can use Crystal Ball to
•
Select projects
•
Assess value streams
•
Estimate costs
•
Identify critical-to-quality project characteristics
Measure
With Crystal Ball, you can use your historical data to quantify the current
performance of your processes. Crystal Ball simulation is especially helpful in
situations where data is infrequent, estimated, or costly to gather.
To assist in your quantification efforts, you can use Crystal Ball to
•
Establish quality and efficiency baselines for your processes
•
Calculate statistics and capability from historic data
•
Measure gaps and risks
Analyze
Using the tools available in Crystal Ball, you can take the mystery out of process
performance, discovering and validating the underlying causes of waste and
variation. You can also take advantage of Crystal Ball’s powerful analytical
capabilities to figure out which opportunities to pursue (and when) based on their
contribution to customer satisfaction and overall profitability.
Using Crystal Ball, you can analyze
•
Tolerance
•
Sensitivity
•
Root causes
•
Linear regression
Improve / Design
By applying Crystal Ball analysis to your Excel spreadsheets, you can virtually test
the proposed process and design improvements that will allow you to deliver the
performance and results you desire. You can also take advantage of Crystal Ball’s

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ORACLE DATA SHEET

CUSTOMERS SAY IT BEST
modeling capabilities to achieve the perfect balance of quality, cost, and time to

market in your designs and products.
“Crystal Ball . . . helped

reduce the total-defects-per-
million opportunity from 50
To assist in the design and performance optimization processes, you can use Crystal
percent to 80 percent for
Ball to
some of our customers. It
allowed us to provide a
•
Analyze reliability
more-solid Master Black Belt
program while keeping costs
•
Simulate processes
under control and the
flexibility of our modeling
•
Optimize inventory
approach at a maximum.”
•
—Ernesto L. García C.,
Allocate resources
PhD, Senior Consultant,
Control / Verify
Sigma Breakthrough
Technologies, Inc.
To optimize process performance, you need to be able to identify both areas that
need improvement and areas in which improvements have already been made, so
that you can learn from the results: Crystal Ball helps you do both. In addition, you
can employ Crystal Ball to verify prototype models that help you establish controls
and action plans as well as ensure that designs meet customer requirements.
To ensure that your team is coming up with the best processes and designs, you can
use Crystal Ball to validate your
•
Designs
•
Functional control plans
Learning How to Use Crystal Ball for Your Six Sigma Projects
All it takes is a day to learn how simulation, risk analysis, stochastic optimization,
and Crystal Ball analysis tools support quality improvement methodologies such as
Six Sigma, DFSS, and Lean principles. Simply attend a public training course or
create a customized onsite course using Oracle Certified Trainers through Oracle
University. For more information on this option, please visit
http://education.oracle.com.
Contact Us
For more information about how your organization can leverage the power of Oracle
Crystal Ball, please visit www.oracle.com/crystalball or call 800.289.2550
(+1.719.757.2173 from outside the U.S.) to speak to an Oracle representative.



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