Complex Problem Solving takes Innovative Methods
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A Different Approach
We know your company is unique, and we’re committed to providing your team with the specialized training program that meets their needs. That’s why we work with you to determine exactly what training program will successfully take your company’s problem solving to the next level. Whatever your team’s needs look like, we’ve got you covered.
If you’re looking for your team to collaborate with individuals from a variety of companies, we offer Shainin-hosted classes, which allow students to network and problem solve within a larger group. If you’d rather deep dive into specific issues that are currently impacting your bottom line, customer satisfaction, or product reliability, we offer customer-hosted classes, which may be held at your facility and are exclusive to your team.
Whether you have several teams that require training, a mix of interest from leadership and engineers alike, or a need for a deep dive into your business processes, we will work with you to develop a training program that fits your needs.
Rolling Top 5®
Convert business problems into breakthrough technical projects with Rolling Top 5®. Focus on the best opportunities to generate ROI and resolve problems that affect your business, your customers, your team, and your bottomline.
Red X®
Solve complex technical problems with a focused and progressive approach that get results fast. Though not just about speed, our Red X method allows teams to solve the "unsolveable" problems.
Resilient Engineering
Reliability matters. When products MUST function properly, early discovery of potential system weakness is essential to trouble-free launches. Improve your product launch success with Resilient Engineering®.
TransaXional®
Business processes aren’t exempt from complex problems but they do present difficulty in resolving them. Don’t let your process problems derail your business. TransaXional® problem solving can identify and correct the steps of the process that threaten your success.
Rolling Top 5®
Created to enhance the effectiveness of organizational problem solving, Rolling Top 5®, is a method to identify and select high ROI projects to better meet your organization’s needs.
Rolling Top 5 exists to help organizations effectively problem solve from the top down. For problem solving to be successful, leadership must be involved in not only seeing an outcome but in selecting and supporting projects and teams to solve the biggest issues.
This methodology covers project selection in a way that allows you to get maximum leverage with minimum resources to solve more impactful problems.
Starting with a Fundamentals Seminar, RT5® is designed to lay the foundation of leadership awareness for structured problem solving. It equips leaders with the knowledge to discern which problem solving methods are most effective for solving each type of problem.
The second day is a Sponsors Workshop. The workshop provides project sponsors with the skills and knowledge to guide project teams to success, assess the quality of evidence supporting decisions and track the effectiveness of their problem solving teams.
An RT5® Leader must demonstrate their knowledge and skill in identifying top problems within the corporation and ensuring projects relating to serious problems are completed efficiently. Additionally, these leaders must provide proper resources to their teams and manage the fast-paced progress of those teams.
The certification is completed by a candidate and their Shainin coach during a private interview. Certification is only approved if the candidate can successfully demonstrate the needed skills.
Red X®
Red X® Quality & Manufacturing Path
Red X® is a technical problem solving method used to identify and control the root cause of a complex problem. Like our other methods, it employs a Y to X approach. We focus on what matters to the current problem you are facing, not on every possible problem within the system. This streamlined focus allows your team to solve problems faster and more efficiently.
Products failing, whether in the field or on a test stand, requires a rapid response. But speed isn’t the only thing that matters. Red X® for Quality and Manufacturing is where this whole thing started...
Suppliers not making the parts to the specs they agreed to and a need for those parts to function properly. Sound familiar?
The speed of solving a problem is only as good as the solution itself. If the root cause isn’t found and controlled, the solution is only temporary. Red X® was designed to give you the best of both: speed and effectiveness.
Imagine being able to tell your customer that the problem is solved and not just hoping, but knowing that you’re right.
Red X® for Quality and Manufacturing can help you do that with products currently in production!
See how it works...
Red X® for Quality & Manufacturing is the best methodology for evaluating failures in current products in production. Each Red X® project follows the FACTUAL framework which guides problem solving teams through repeatable steps to find and control the root cause of complex technical problems. The framework also requires teams to look at where else these problems and solutions can be leveraged to get more impactful results from their efforts.
Red X® for Quality & Manufacturing can be employed in two ways:
- URGENT Problem? -> We’ll help you Solve It Now
- Not Urgent, but Annoying or Important? -> Let’s Lay the Groundwork through training your team
For an Urgent problem that you need addressed now, we’ll send a Red X expert from our team to you. They help you resolve the issue quickly & efficiently. We’re motivated to solve your problem and we stand by that. Learn more about our Problem Solving Assistance here.
Within the Red X®for Quality & Manufacturing curriculum, students learn:
- The framework to apply the methodology, FACTUAL
- How to assess & solve measurement system issues with a specific focus
- To develop a problem solving approach that is specific to the type of problem seen
- Plan and execute strategies to identify the root cause
- Confirm the Red X®with statistical confirmation testing and demonstrated system improvement
- Testing proposed solutions before implementation
- Track the development of those solutions
- Plan and execute those solutions and leverage great results
- And so much more…
But training needs implementation to make it stick. Every training is started with real projects identified by you that need to be solved, then your team learns the methods, and then they are guided by a coach to solve them. It takes all the parts to make this as effective as possible. Ready to build a problem solving program you can be proud of?
Check out our Training page to learn more about Problem Solving Programs and how they work.
Proving you understand a concept is one thing, demonstrating you can apply the concept in the real world is another. Shainin certifications require both. To be certified for Red X® on our Quality and Manufacturing Path, an individual must complete three phases of training & application of the concepts.
- Red X® Apprentice Course & Project
- Red X® Journeyman Course & Project
- Red X® Master Course & Projects & Coaching
Each level of certification requires completing the course (typically 3-4 days of training) and at least one completed project using the methodology. Once someone has reached the Master level course, they are also required to coach others to success. We believe that some of the best lessons can be learned by teaching and coaching others.
This not only improves their skills to solve and coach but helps to continue to grow your ROI and problem solving program into something sustainable.
Red X® Product & Reliability Path
Addressing problems before they hit mass production is the ideal. With Red X® Problem Solving for Product Reliability, your team can learn how to do just that. Imagine being able to launch a new product that had so few initial failures that your team was celebrated rather than criticized.
When using Red X®, your team can find the potential issues before they happen to save you money and time and save them frustration and long hours.
Red X® for Product Reliability focuses on the two main areas that are often overlooked:
- Problem Solving & Prevention during the development & initial launch
- Improving reliability for products during the customer usage phase.
With strategies to identify the physics behind the failure, Red X® for Product & Reliability Engineering helps your team gain a clear understanding of the root cause of the problem to control or eliminate it.
Red X® for Product & Reliability Engineering is the best methodology for evaluating product performance, durability and reliability and conforming to regulatory requirements.
Red X® for Product & Reliability Engineering can be employed in two ways:
- URGENT Problem? -> We’ll help you Solve It Now
- Not Urgent, but Annoying or Important? -> Let’s Lay the Groundwork through training your team
For an Urgent issue that you need addressed now, we’ll send a Red X® expert from our team to you. They’ll guide you through the Red X® framework to quickly & efficiently address your design and reliability concerns. We’re motivated to solve your problem or prevent potential failures and we stand by that. Learn more about our Problem Solving Assistance here.
If your team needs to learn how to do this, then a Reliability Curriculum might be just what you need. It consists of training, projects selected by you for your business, and a dedicated coach to help your team implement what they’ve learned. The Reliabilty Path will teach your team:
- The framework to apply the methodology, FACTUAL
- How to assess & solve measurement system issues with a specific focus,
- To develop a problem solving approach that is specific to the type of problem seen
- To Apply Red X® Reliability strategies
- To Address No Trouble Found (NTF) issues by leveraging the six causes of warranty NTF
- Accelerated testing techniques for malfunction & destructive events
- Factors that influence fatigue life and understanding them in low cycle and high cycle failures
- How to address factors that influence reliability and create solutions to control them
- And so much more…
Each level of the Red X® for Product and Reliability Engineering path improves upon the skills of the previous and enhances your team's ability to prevent & solve problems.
To get started, the first step is the Red X® Apprentice Course for Product Performance. Are you ready?
Wondering what the levels are and how you move through them? Check out the next section...
Proving you understand a concept is one thing, demonstrating you can apply the concept in the real world is another. Shainin certifications require both. To be certified for Red X® on our Product and Reliability Path, an individual must complete three phases of training & application of the concepts.
- Red X® Apprentice with the Product Performance Course & Project
- Red X® Journeyman with the Reliability Course & Project
- Red X® Master with the Master Course & Projects & Coaching
Each level of certification requires completing the course (typically 3-4 days of training) and at least one completed project using the methodology. Once someone has reached the Master level course, they are also required to coach others to success. We believe that some of the best lessons can be learned by teaching and coaching others.
This not only improves their skills to solve and coach but helps to continue to grow your ROI and problem solving program into something sustainable.
Additional Red X® Trainings
Additional Red X® Trainings
A Red X Technician is a specialized problem solver trained in a set of Shainin tools relevant to shop floor problems in specific technologies, e.g., fabrication, or assembly. A Red X Technician can solve problems where the Red X is contained within the local manufacturing system. A Red X Technician can successfully apply fundamental problem-solving tools and may assist Red X Journeyman on the execution of techniques to support their projects, e.g., Isoplot®, Multi-Vari, and Component Search™.
The one-day Red X® BasiX® class is specifically designed to provide an introduction to the Shainin methodology and to learn the basic Red X® approach and tools.
Participants receive a certificate of attendance.
Course Objectives:
- Basic understanding of structured problem-solving techniques to support complex problem-solving projects
- Introduction to the following tools:
- Importance of a simple measurement system analysis (Isoplot)
- Identification of non-random patterns (concentration diagram)
- Identification of the largest family of variations (Multi-Vari)
- Identification of the Red X® component (component search)
- Confirmation of a Red X® candidate (confirmation test)
Prerequisites: None
Students learn strategies and techniques for finding the hidden causes that are keeping their IT systems from performing properly. Students will learn to identify contrasts to enable fast and efficient problem solving. They also learn to confirm the Red X® with statistical confidence before implementing corrective actions. Finally, students learn to apply solutions, document savings, and leverage the profound knowledge gained by revealing unknown relationships.
Target Audience: IT-Support, System Administrators, Software Developers, IT-Specialists
Course Objectives:
- Learn Red X® problem solving principles and concepts.
- Apply Strategy Diagrams to identify contrasts or patterns for problem solving.
- Develop problem solving strategies for IT systems and process.
- Understand converging from a failure mode to a Red X® root cause.
- Analyze IT systems to identify the Best of the Best to Worst of Worst contrasts.
- Conduct measurement system analysis using Stage 0.
- Execute Component Search™ to converge on the part(s) or process(s) containing the problem.
- Apply Paired or Group Comparison to identify a Red X® root cause candidate.
- Document the convergent problem solving process on a Solution Tree.
- Confirm the Red X® with a statistical confirmation test and demonstrated system improvement.
- Finish projects by applying solutions, tracking benefits, and leveraging results.
Prerequisites: None
Red X® Problem Solving for SixSigma Blackbelts is an accelerated training specifically designed for certified SixSigma Blackbelts. Participants will learn the full range of Apprentice and Advanced Shainin problem solving strategies and techniques in one tailored training course.
Course Objectives:
- Apply advanced tools for Feature, Property, Defect, Malfunction and Destructive Event problems
- Isolate the operations containing the Red X® using Operations Search™, Active Multi-Vari or Active Concentration Diagram
- Develop Defect strategies and solve Defect problems using Concentration Diagrams
- Develop Malfunction Event strategies and solve Malfunction Event problems using Component Search™ and Paired Comparisons™
- Develop Destructive Event strategies; solve Destructive Event problems using event to energy transform and energy accounting
- Understand when to use full factorial experiments
- Plan and execute statistically designed single factor experiments
- Establish realistic tolerances on two product features or two process parameters simultaneously
- Test proposed solutions before implementation to ensure improved system performance
- Track the development of innovative solutions with a Corrective Action Tree
- Confirm the Red X® with confirmation tests and demonstrated system improvement
- Plan and execute solutions and leverage results
Prerequisites: Participants must be certified SixSigma Blackbelts
This four-day class is specifically designed to develop expert problem-solving skills to solve both technical and non-technical problems while meeting lean transformation objectives.
Course Objectives:
Red X® Technical Core Content
- Learn to validate measurement systems applying isoplot and stage 0
- Solve Delta M measurement system problems
- Develop feature and property strategies
- Apply multi-vari and scatter plots to feature and property problems
- Develop defect strategies
- Apply concentration diagrams to defect problems
- Develop malfunction event strategies
- Apply component search, paired comparisons, and group comparisons to malfunction events
Lean Business Process Core Content
- Identify and define the business process problem
- Evaluate the process as well as the critical functions
- Rank the critical functions
- Identify causes
- Define options of focused process improvements
- Execute actions, apply process improvements, and communicate efficiently to team and management
Prerequisites: None
Resilient Engineering®
Solving problems after they happen is good, but preventing them from happening is even better.
Some products or designs can’t afford to have failures. Failures would put lives at risk. When your design, manufacturing, and launch MUST be right, risk mitigation is important.
Resilient Engineering® helps to identify and mitigate risk relative to performance expectations, life cycle requirements and manufacturing variations to create a TROUBLE-FREE launch.
Ready to have a robust design solution that avoids…
- Last minute design changes
- Product launch delays
- Post-Start of Production modifications
Resilient Engineering®can improve product performance, lower warranty costs and improve manufacturing efficiency.
Early is the design phase is the best place to capture potential issues. But when you’re in the early design phase it can be tough to nail down the specific issues that potentially cause problems. With complex designs growing more and more complex, you need a way to create simple, straight-forward simulations and tests to provide insights on new product performance and reliability.
Resilient Design & Development can help you get there. Using tools we’ve developed helping clients with their most pressing design problems, this 5-step framework can help reduce risk early in concept development.
Our 5-step Framework includes:
- Risk Assessment - Identify & prioritize high risk functions using pareto
- Functional Analysis - functional decomposition of the design to determine critical inputs
- Linkage Matrix - mapping critical inputs to functions
- Conceptual Failure Mode Testing - Create measurement systems for failure simulations
- Identify failure modes and potential modes to reduce risk
We focus on the critical functions to place emphasis and time on the most impactful items. Resilient Design shouldn’t slow you down.
After design, your product has to be made. Mitigating risk in the manufacturing process is a must. But where and how?
Understanding where high risk exists in the manufacturing process is paramount. However, you can’t have high intensity focus on every step of the process and stay on schedule. Using our framework, we can help you focus on the most important and high risk sections of your process to reveal and control critical manufacturing parameters that impact product performance and reliability.
Our 4-step Framework includes:
- Identifying & prioritizing high risk manufacturing processes through risk priority pareto
- Analyze & decompose high risk ops
- Characterize process steps by influence on variation
- Create controls for the those high risk steps
We focus on the high risk process steps to place emphasis and time on the most impactful processes. Resilient Design shouldn’t slow you down.
Design and Manufacturing are a great start, but warranty is where the rubber meets the road...sometimes literally. Minimizing risk for the warranty phase of a product can be difficult at best.
With Resilient Engineering® your team can feel confident that the potential warranty issues have been explored and mitigated. Our 4-step Framework can help your team reveal a design’s weakest link in the most time efficient and cost effective way we’ve encountered. You’ll end up with a sample of units tested to failure based on your product’s unique customer usage profile and environmental factors with statistical estimates for when each weak link will fail.
Our 4-Step Framework includes:
- Understanding the system & its environmental energies
- Develop reliability testing plan
- Execute Reliability Testing plan
- Analysis and Interpretation of Results
We focus on the weakest links to place emphasis and time on the most impactful parts of your product. Resilient Design shouldn’t slow you down.
TransaXional®
Solving business problems takes more than administrative controls. TransaXional® is a business process problem solving method used to identify and improve the hidden causes keeping business processes from performing properly or at their highest levels.
Like our other methods, TransaXional® problem solving employs a Y to X approach. But what that really means is that we’re looking at the result you need to have and working our way backwards to identify the critical things that must go right in order for that to happen.
With business processes, often the process involves people and systems and parts. It’s not simply bound by physics like a technical problem is. This presents a complication for many typical problem solving methods.
If we try to imagine all the possible things that could go wrong, the possibilities are endless.
TransaXional® problem solving uses our DETAIL framework to solve a wide variety of business process problems, from reduction of inventory inaccuracies to streamlining an employee onboarding process and a wealth of other process problems. It’s robust enough to be agile for many industries with consistent process improvement results.
For a while we were known as solely a technical problem solving company. After having great results with a few clients, they asked if we could assist them with solving some process problems. And with that TransaXional® was born. Over the last few years we’ve adjusted and fine-tuned our DETAIL framework to get the best results possible.
Ready for a process tune-up?
TransaXional® problem solving is best for processes with a hidden root cause. Often, a process will have multiple factors that could result in an undesired result. In these cases, TransaXional® is used to identify and define focused activities to drive improvement.
TransaXional® Problem Solving can be employed in two ways:
- URGENT Problem? -> We’ll help you Solve It Now
- Not Urgent, but Annoying or Important? -> Let’s Lay the Groundwork through training your team
For an Urgent problem that you need addressed now, we’ll send a TransaXional® expert from our team to you. They’ll help you identify the issues and define an action plan to resolve it quickly and efficiently. We’re motivated to solve your problem and we stand by that. Learn more about our Problem Solving Assistance here.
Within the TransaXional® Problem Solving curriculum, students learn:
- The framework to apply the methodology, DETAIL
- Developing function models
- How to Talk to the Occurrences
- To Assign priority to critical functions
- Identify & Define focused activities to drive improvement
- Utilize functional complexity scores, functional RPNs and redundancy detection
- How to design new processes using a function-based approach
- To explore how TransaXional® and Lean methods interface and work together
- And much more...
But training needs implementation to make it stick. Every training is started with real projects identified by you that need to be solved, then your team learns the methods, and then they are guided by a coach to solve them. It takes all the parts to make this as effective as possible. Ready to build a problem solving program you can be proud of?
Check out our Training page to learn more about Problem Solving Programs and how they work.
Proving you understand a concept is one thing, demonstrating you can apply the concept in the real world is another. Shainin certifications require both. To be certified for TransaXional® Problem Solving, an individual must complete two phases of training & application of the concepts.
- TransaXional®Apprentice Course & Project
- TransaXional®Journeyman Course & Project
Each level of certification requires completing the course (typically 3-4 days of training) and at least one completed project using the methodology.
This not only improves their skills to solve and coach but helps to continue to grow your ROI and problem solving program into something sustainable.
