In the telecom industry, Lean Six Sigma can be instrumental in identifying issues on time. By implementing Lean Six Sigma your company can use fewer resources, cut down on waste and make positive improvements and finally lead to an increase in profits.

Case Study-

Problem 1: In a telecom company, the order error rate for order provisioning campaigns was 20%. The trained Black Belts took up the Lean Six Sigma black belt project and they used the DMAIC methodology of Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, and Control. Cause and effect diagrams were used to brainstorm on all the potential causes and the Pareto analysis is the 80:20 principle narrowed down the causes to a vital few which were –

• incorrect code assignment
• duplicate orders
• incompatible orders accepted
• order entry errors
• code errors

These causes were validated using boxplots, scatterplots, and hypothesis tests. Use of FMEA which is a method of taking preventive actions so that you don’t commit an error, along with brainstorming techniques like 6 3 5 successfully brought down the order error rate to just 0.5%. This saved $10 million for the company and reduced customer complaints by 90%. The telecom company has sustained these improvements over the last 5 years using control charts.

Problem 2:
A mobile services provider in Europe and the middle east faced an issue of Value-added Services (VAS) reversal in prepaid connections. The DMAIC project was undertaken by trained Black Belts. Root cause analysis and hypothesis test revealed customer service agents were erroneously de-activating value-adding services while providing customer service. Poka-Yoke was utilized to prevent such mistakes. A 5 Whys diagram was used where we ask WHY 5 times to get to the root causes. FMEA was used to find out the possible causes of such failure modes in the entire range of customer service activities. Round Robin’s brainstorming generated many ideas to bring inadvertent errors down. Additional audits were initiated to prevent manual errors which were difficult to eliminate. The change in VAS service was made impossible without the customer’s recorded concurrence. As 100% recording was initiated, each case became verifiable and led to increased consciousness among agents. Reduction in VAS reversal complaints led to not only an additional revenue of $5 million but also resulted in higher customer experience which contributed to an increase in market share of the company to make it number 1 in the region.