10.2 Introduction

As smartphones and other internet-connected devices have become more widespread, there has been a startling increase in how much time people spend online. In a Pew Research study from 2021, about 31% of U.S. adults report that they go online “almost constantly.” Overall, 85% of Americans say they go online daily and the trend indicates that these statistics will continue to increase. Much of that time spent online involves people spending money. Does this reflect your own experience?

Because of all that time spent online, much of the money that used to go to brick-and-mortar businesses now goes to online retailers. While far from alone nowadays, Amazon is the main culprit. So much so that you may have heard of a term capturing its impact: the “Amazon effect.” This term describes the impact that the digital marketplace has had on traditional forms of commerce. Namely, the Amazon effect has introduced us to an almost entirely frictionless shopping process with near-immediate results.

Amazon aspires to be the earth’s most customer-centric company. Its leadership believes that we always want something better, which drives the company to improve and innovate continuously. Quoting Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos from memos to stakeholders, “good processes serve you so you can serve the customers,” but “if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing.” This means you need to improve the process continuously, not merely perform it satisfactorily.

Think about the last few times you experienced lousy service. Something certainly went wrong somewhere along the process responsible for your experience. You may rightly conclude that effective processes are crucial to creating value and managing customer relationships; this means improving current processes is vital. As its name suggests, this task is the goal of the Improve phase of the DMAIC framework.

The purpose of this topic is to take you through the key activities of the Improve phase within the lean six sigma DMAIC framework so that you can eventually apply them to projects at your organization. We also discuss crucial tools that you need to add to your lean six sigma toolset.