Six Sigma Black Belt –

Study Guides

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 Introduction to Six Sigma

Team Decision Making Tools

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 Team Decision Making Tools

Index

• Brainstorming

• Nominal Group Technique (NGT)

• Multi-voting

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 Team Decision Making Tools

Brainstorming

• The brainstorming technique was introduced by Alex Faickney

Osborn in his book Applied Imagination in 1930. It is used as a tool to
create ideas about a particular topic and to find creative solutions to a
problem.

Brainstorming procedure

• The first and foremost procedure in conducting brainstorming is to

review the rules and regulations of brainstorming. Some of the rules
and regulations are: all the ideas should be recorded, no scope for
criticism, evaluation and discussion of ideas.

• The second procedure is to examine the problem that has to be

discussed. Ensure that all the team members understand the theme
of brainstorming.

• Give enough time (i.e., one or two minutes) for the team members to
think about the problem.

• Ask the team members to think creatively to generate ideas as much

as possible. Record the ideas generated by the members so that
everyone can review those ideas. Proper care has to be taken to
ensure that there is no criticism of any of the ideas and everyone is
allowed to be creative.

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 Team Decision Making Tools

Rules followed in brainstorming

• Ensure that all the team members participate in the brainstorming

session because the more the ideas that are produced, the greater
will be the effect of the solution.

• As the brainstorming session is a discussion among various people,

no distinction should be made between them. The ideas generated by
other people should not be condemned.

• At the time of building people’s ideas, consider each person’s ideas

as the best, because the ideas generated by each individual may be
superior to the person.

• While generating ideas, always put more trust on quantitative ideas

rather than qualitative ideas. As a facilitator you can tally these
generated ideas with the team’s performance.

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 Team Decision Making Tools
Nominal Group Technique (NGT)

• The nominal group technique was introduced by Delbecq, Van de

Ven, and Gustafson in 1971. It is a kind of brainstorming that
encourages every participant to express his/her views. This technique
is used to create a ranked list of ideas. In this technique, all the
participants are requested to write their ideas anonymously and the
moderator collects the written ideas and each is voted on by the
group. It helps in decision-making and organizational planning where
creative solutions are sought. It is generally carried out in a Six Sigma
project to get feedback from the team members.

Procedures followed

• All the members of the team are asked to create ideas and write them
down without discussing with others.

• The inputs from all members are openly displayed and each person is
asked to give more explanation about his/her feedback.

• Each listed idea is then discussed to get clarification and evaluation.

This is usually a repetitive process.

• Each person is allowed to vote individually on the priority of ideas and

a group decision is made based on these ratings.

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 Team Decision Making Tools
Multi-voting

• Multivoting, which is also called NGT voting or nominal prioritization,

is a simple technique used by teams to choose the most significant or
highest priority item from a list with limited discussion and difficulty.
Generally it follows the brainstorming technique.

When to use multivoting

• Multivoting is used when the group has a lengthy list of possibilities

and wants to specify it in a small list for later analysis and discussion.

• It is applied after brainstorming for the purpose of selecting ideas.

How to conduct a multivoting activity

• Conduct a brainstorming process to create a list of ideas and record

the ideas that are created during this process. After completing this,
clarify the ideas and combine them so that everyone can easily
understand. The group should not discuss the ideas at this time.

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 Team Decision Making Tools
Multi-voting

• Participants will vote for the ideas that are eligible for more
discussion. Here the participants are given freedom to vote for as
many ideas as they desire.

• Tally the vote for each item. If any item gets the majority of votes, it is
placed for the next round.

• In the next level of voting, the participants can cast their vote for the
remaining items in the list.

• Participants will continue their voting till they get a proper number of
ideas for the group to examine as a part of the decision-making or
problem solving process. When the group holds a discussion about
pros and cons of the project, the remaining ideas are discussed.

• This discussion may be completed by a group as a whole

• Continue proper actions by creating a choice of the best option or

discovering the top priorities.

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 Team Decision Making Tools
In this chapter, we have learnt about:
• Brainstorming
• Nominal Group Technique (NGT)
• Multi-voting

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