Six Sigma: Improving Procurement Process in Frosts Food & Beverage

Running head: SIX SIGMA
Six Sigma
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1SIX SIGMA
Table of Content
Background, Define & Measure................................................................................................3
Background of the company, products and services:.............................................................3
Problem statement:.................................................................................................................3
VOC and CTQ metric issue examination:.............................................................................3
CTQ baseline performance and project objectives:...............................................................4
Analyse and Improve.................................................................................................................4
“As-Is” Process Map for the subject work process:...............................................................4
Fishbone analysis and picture of brainstorming session:.......................................................6
Gimba walk (root causes and Waste in process)....................................................................5
Recommendations (3 for root causes, 3 for wastes)..............................................................7
Control:......................................................................................................................................9
Countermeasures and recommendations of 2 measures to standardize the improvement
process....................................................................................................................................9
Control plan for improved process:........................................................................................9
Lean Six Sigma Deployments:.................................................................................................10
Quality improvement process with regards to: organisation and roles, approach or
methodology, and deployment program. Examine and describe the challenges of the
current approach...................................................................................................................10
Evaluation and Recommendation for adopting Lean Six Sigma management and
deployment...........................................................................................................................11
Reference and Bibliography:....................................................................................................12

2SIX SIGMA
Background, Define & Measure
Background of the company, products and services:
Frosts Food & Beverage was established in 1996 at Tuas, Singapore. Currently the
company has 27000 square feet facility with 3 huge freezer area with the capacity of holding
500 standard pallet, chillier rooms and dry goods storage space (Frosts.com.sg., 2012). Frosts
Food & Beverage has started a sister company name Quix Pte Ltd, which operates fresh food
processing. Currently the major activity of this company is to distribute supply chain basket
of goods to major convenience stores and petrol stations. The Frosts Food & Beverage
company is able to deliver their goods with fresh condition through Freeze-Thaw logistics
system. The company collects various types of process foods and beverage items from all
around the world with efficient supply chain and distributes the products to major hotels,
restaurants, Cafe chain, fast food chain, Airline catering houses, major convenience stores
trough cold chain logistics. In last 2 years the company added few international and national
level retailer companies in their consumer list. Frosts Food International Pte Ltd is a
subsidiary of Frosts Food & Beverage operates the international business within East
Malaysia, Brunei, Australia, India, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Nepal
(Frosts.com.sg., 2012). Frosts Fine Foods is a new division within Frosts Food and Beverage
to handle the distribution of gourmet ingredients and products.
Problem statement:
Frosts Food & Beverage is currently experiencing a severe operation dilemma in their
procurement procedure. Being a food and beverage distribution company, the management of
this company has to maintain a steady indirect procurement items such as supplies, materials
and vendor services to support their day to day operations and activities. Many of these items
are kept in the warehouses and Freezers and supplier as per the requirement from the
purchasing department. For the past two years, the stuffs have repeatedly complained that the
Purchasing Operation (OP) takes a lengthy time due to the delay in procurement procedure
from vendor. After generating the order details, the fetching request is taking excessive
amount of time to procure the item successfully from the vendors. This operation delay is
causing high consumer attrition, which is eventually declining the profitability of the
company. The sales and purchasing director has developed a team with few staff member
who will be responsible for conducting Lean Six Sigma project (Habidin & Yusof, 2012).
The Lean Six Sigma project team will conduct a study within the procurement system of the
company to determine the ways of reducing the operation delay by 30% within next 6
months.
VOC and CTQ metric issue examination:
Voice of Customer (VoC:)
The past two years, the stuffs have repeatedly complained that the delayed Purchasing
Operation (OP) is causing excessive amount of waiting time resulting the loss of consumer
count. From purchasing department the order request is delivered with highest priority. In
store system the request is processed while taking excessive amount of time for initiating the
procurement procedure. Therefore the stakeholders are the employees of warehouse
management, employees of operational department, food and beverage market, suppliers and
vendors. Therefore, the details data about the process should be collected from these

3SIX SIGMA
stakeholders with VoC data (Atmaca & Girenes, 2013). The interview and survey can be used
as the tool of this data collection procedure. For internal data collection from the employees
the interview can be used. At the same time to collect proactive data of VoC from the
customer the project can use survey on a stipulated sample size of customer. The long time
procedure of VoC should also include the Purchase Request (PR) in the components to
collect list.
Critical to Quality (CTQ):
For this project of PO process improvement some major or minor critical issues are
causing the hindrance in the procurement process. However, the major and most influence
factors are waiting time of the consumer, which caused by lengthy Procurement Request
Process Time (PRPT). Therefore, The CTQ of this project is Procurement Request Process
Time.
CTQ baseline performance and project objectives:
Procurement Request Process Time or PRPT refers the duration of processing
Procurement Request. Currently the duration of the process is on an average 7 days. Most of
the client expects the product would be delivered within 4 days. As per the current situation,
the existing PRPT can negotiate with the consumers to wait 1 days more while ensuring the 5
days of purchase request processing time. Therefore, as per the situation the baseline
performance of the Purchasing Operation and Purchasing Request Processing System is 5
days on an average. Therefore, to measure the baseline performance the following parameters
are developed:
Criteria-Is the PRPT is taking less than 5 days to process the purchase completely?
Test- Was the order placed before 5 days?
Decision- The purchased order is issued from Purchasing Operation in less than 5 days/ the
purchased order is issued from Purchasing Operation in more than 5 days
Project Objective: The objective of this project is to determine the ways of reducing
the operation delay by 30% within next 6 months through reducing the Procurement Request
Process Time from 7 days to 5 days.
Analyse and Improve
“As-Is” Process Map for the subject work process:
The following “Ass-Is” Process Map is a Deployment Flowchart in order to initiate
Procurement Process for Purchasing Operation of more than $5,000 and Less than $20,000 in
Frosts Food & Beverage PRPT.