How a Pick Chart can be used to prioritize improvement ideas

Have you ever faced a situation where you or your team have multiple solutions for a given problem but you don’t know where to start from? Or you have implemented various improvement ideas but it couldn’t bring a lot of change? If yes, then don’t worry! We have got your back and after this article on ‘How a Pick Chart can be used to prioritize improvement ideas’ you are never going to face these problems again.

This article will help you to learn the concept of pick chart and how it can be used for organizing and selecting improvement ideas.

Before we start we will just brief the application of pick chart. Suppose we want to reduce the changeover time through SMED and we have also come up with a lot of solutions for reducing the change over time, pick chart will help us to prioritize and select the solutions. Prioritizing will help us to get immediate results with less effort. In short, we can use pick chart where there is one aim or problem and there are many solutions to these.

Ok let’s start

What is a Pick chart?

PICK chart is a Lean Six Sigma tool which helps to organise, prioritize and pick the right solutions for a problem, considering its impact or positive results and resources required.

PICK is an abbreviation for P – Possible, I – Implement, C – Complex, & K – Kill and these are the names of the quadrants of the chart, which will be explained later in this article.

PICK chart is a very common Tool for easy prioritizing and simple visualization of ideas and it can be used by anyone.

The above figure is an example of pick chart. It has following two axis;

• Vertical axis which represents the Impact of the idea on the project.
• Horizontal axis which represents the amount of Resources (Man, Machine, Material, Method or Money) required to implement the idea.

Here “Impact” refers to the benefit of implementing the mentioned idea. Whereas “Resources required” describes the amount of resources required to implement the mentioned idea.

Both ‘impact’ and ‘resource required’ ranges from Low to High on PICK chart, in its respective axis.

Impact increase from low to high when we move from bottom to top on the vertical axis and resources required will increase from low to high in horizontal axis when we move from left to right on the horizontal axis.

As seen in the above figure, Pick chart is divided into 4 Quadrants and it is named as Possible, Implement, Complex and Kill.

Now, lets see how to use this pick chart…

How to use a PICK CHART

As we mentioned earlier pick chart is used for organizing, prioritizing and picking the right improvement ideas, considering its impact and resource required.

How this can be done is explained in the following steps.

Step 0 – Team needs a Facilitator (mostly you), board, pens, sticky notes (Lots of them) and obviously a team with ignited minds.

Step 1 – Next make the team members jot down their ideas on “sticky notes” individually, for a particular problem. Make sure the team has ample amount of time for this step.

-Take a Small Break once everybody is done writing their ideas-

Step 2 – Identify unique ideas (duplicate ideas are removed in this step).

Step 3 – Now discuss each unique idea one by one and paste them on the chart at a position, which is decided by rating of that particular idea, as shown in the below figure.

Facilitator can ask following questions in this step for more clarity among the team members and also it will helps in rating of ideas:

• How many team members are required to complete the task?
• Have we done similar activity before?
• Do we need the help of other departments or external experts?
• How long can it take to complete the activity?
• What are the bottlenecks of this activity?
• Have we seen similar activities at another company?

Rating of an idea:

In rating of an idea, each idea is rated according to the following two criteria.

1. Impact: The more the benefits an idea brings, the more it should be rated high on the vertical axis.
2. Resources required: The more the resources are consumed by implementing an idea, the more it should be rated towards right on the horizontal axis. Following factors needs to be considered while rating an idea with this criteria.

We will understand these factors one by one.

• Manpower – The more the Manpower required to implement the idea, the higher it should be rated.
• Machine – If some specific machine is required to implement the idea, which is not readily available it should be accordingly rated high.
• Material – If some specific material is required to implement the idea, which is not readily available it should be accordingly rated high.
• Method – If some specific skill or method is required to implement the idea, which is not present in the team it should be accordingly rated high.
• Money/ Time – If implementation of the idea requires a lot of money or time it should be accordingly rated high.

A position is decided on the chart based on the rating of impact and resource required, as shown in the above figure.

The best part about this tool is the fact that there are only two dimensions to rate and it’s fairly simple to rate in both the dimensions, which are impact and resource required.

Don’ts

• Never place an idea on the line, because it will hinder the team’s ability to take a decision.
• Don’t discuss an idea for too long. If it’s taking a lot of time position the idea in most relevant quadrant and discuss the idea after step 5.

Step 4 – Now if all the ideas are positioned on the PICK chart, disclose name of all the quadrants (its recommended to disclose the names of the quadrant at this stage only, since there will be biasness in rating and positioning of the ideas on pick chart). This name of the quadrant gives us an idea about what to do with those ideas which fall in that particular quadrant and also in prioritizing the ideas.

Name of the Quadrants and its importance are as follows; Please refer the figure. The chart is divided equally into four as shown.

Q1 Possible: As seen in the above figure, activities in this quadrant require minimum effort but simultaneously their impact is also minimum. These activities are also known as “Just Do It” and they are mostly second in the priority list.

Q2 Implement: Activities mentioned in this quadrant are the “Top Priority” as they require minimum efforts but their impact is maximum. Team should focus on implementing these activities first and reap maximum benefits from it.

Q3 Complex: Activities mentioned in this quadrant have maximum impact but as the resources required are high teams try to avoid these activities. They are mostly third in the priority list.

Q4 Kill: Even though this quadrant is named as “Kill” quadrant, these activities are not totally neglected but instead the team needs to introspect these activities and look for the ways to make it shift in other quadrants. They are generally last in the priority list.

There might exist few disagreements about the position of ideas (especially after disclosing the name of the quadrants), note down any major disagreement and document the reason behind it. The disagreements should be discussed with experts.

Step 5 – Give team members a sufficient time to rethink about their ideas and their positions on PICK chart and finalize the positions.

Step 6 – Prioritize all the ideas based on its position in chart, as explained in Quadrant section. That means, ideas positioned in the ‘Q2 implement’ quadrant have first priority, ideas positioned in the ‘Q1 possible’ quadrant have second priority, ideas positioned in the ‘Q3 complex’ quadrant have third priority and ideas positioned in the ‘Q4 kill’ quadrant have fourth priority.

If more than one idea come in a quadrant first priority goes to the idea which is positioned nearer to the top left corner. And select the next nearest idea to the top left corner as second priority.

In our case priority list is as follows.

1. Idea 3
2. Idea 2
3. Idea 1
4. Idea 4
5. Idea 5

Step 7 – Create a project plan and start implementing the ideas based on priorities!

Remember Prioritizing ideas and documenting them is just the beginning, real benefits are obtained when these activities are implemented.

Its recommended to document the priority list and action plan.

Start implementing the ideas as per the priority list one by one and see the results. Once we have got satisfying results or reached targets stop implementing the ideas, since the implementation of projects at the bottom of the priority list will require a lot of effort and the impact will be very less.

Thank You.

I am thankful to Mr.Meet Maheshwari for contributing to this article. And he has also contributed to the article on CLIT SHEET.

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About the Article Contributor

Meet Maheshwari is a budding Lean consultant, a Post Graduate in Industrial Engineering and SixSigma Green Belt. He has worked with 15+ industries and helped them through their Operational Excellence journey since 2018. He has delivered in total 650+ hours of training on various concepts of Lean, QMS and Six Sigma.