Steven Ouellette
What is the most important thing for your business to be working on right now? Would everyone else working there agree? Is everyone working toward the business’s goals? How do you know?
Most...
Steven Ouellette
Why is improving quality so important? Why not spend our money on something else in the business? I know it seems a little odd to ask this, especially to readers of Quality Digest, but could those...
Steven Ouellette
“It is what it is.” I’m hearing that a lot now. I’m OK with it if someone is using it as a shortcut to mean something like the Serenity Prayer. But more and more, I’m hearing people use it in a way...
Steven Ouellette
Last article, I wrote about the importance of correctly classifying variables as part of the research design process, and discussed the benefits of the hugely useful, but oft-neglected, blocked...
Steven Ouellette
Yesterday in “Blocking Out the Nuisance, Part One,” we saw the results of an experiment done by That Guy Over There that didn’t control for the environmental variable of humidity. There was a lot...
Steven Ouellette
No, I am not writing about going, “Lalalalala! I can't hear you!” when someone is trying to tell you bad news. In the last couple of articles, we have been exploring how to properly perform research...
Steven Ouellette
Let's face it—many industrial researchers, including Six Sigma Black Belts, do a terrible job of planning the research they need to do to perform their jobs efficiently. See that guy over there?...
Steven Ouellette
Last month I showed you a process to use to save money, time, and sanity when doing any type of research, including applied problem solving and quality improvement (“Don’t Design the Experiment...
Steven Ouellette
Although we may use the define, measure, analyze, improve, control (DMAIC) mnemonic to help guide us through our problem solving, that doesn’t really give us a lot of specific direction (as I bemoan...
Steven Ouellette
“Come and listen to a story ‘bout a man named Ned / a poor Texas Sharpshooter barely kept his family fed. Then one day he was shootin’ at his barn / and he came up with a plan to spin a silly yarn...
