Workshop: Affinity Diagrams & Interrelationship Diagraphs

The tools practiced in this workshop are:

• Brainstorming
• Affinity diagrams
• Interrelationship diagraphs

Situation:

Consider that you/your group works for Whole Foods Market and you have been tasked with perfecting the "customer experience." In the Analyze phase of your Lean Six Sigma project, you decide to brainstorm ideas for why customers might have a negative experience shopping at your store. Then, you plan to use an affinity diagram and an interrelationship diagraph to organize all these ideas and then pin-point the key driver(s) and outcome(s) of this problem.

Instruction:

Use information from your training manual in Analyze Phase - Lessons 2-6 to assist you with the activities that follow. Be sure to follow the "best practices" for each tool you use in this workshop.

Activities:

Question 1. Brainstorm ideas for why customers might have a negative experience shopping at your store. You MUST come up with at least 20 ideas.

Note: You do not have to show your work here, as it will be shown in Activity #2.

Question 2. Create an affinity diagram that organizes your ideas for why customers might have a negative experience shopping at your store

Question 3. Create an interrelationship diagraph that shows the relationships between causes for why customers might have a negative experience shopping with you and that highlights the key driver(s) and key outcome(s) you identify regarding this problem.