Harish Jose
I am writing today about “bootstrap kaizen.” This is something I have been thinking about for a while. Wikipedia describes bootstrapping as “a self-starting process that is supposed to proceed...
Harish Jose
I am a quality manager by profession. Thus, I think about quality a lot. How would one define “quality?” A simple view of quality is “conformance to requirements.” This simplistic view of...
Harish Jose
I came across an interesting phrase recently. I was reading Kozo Saito’s paper, “Hitozukuri and Monozukuri,” and I saw the phrase “kufu eyes.” Kufu is a Japanese word that means “to seek a way out of...
Harish Jose
I have written about sample size calculations many times before. One of the most common questions a statistician is asked is, “How many samples do I need—is a sample size of 30 appropriate?” The...
Harish Jose
I have been writing about kaizen a lot recently. It is a simple idea: change for the better. Generally, kaizen stands for small incremental improvements. Here I’m going to look at what is the best...
Harish Jose
In today’s column, I will be looking at kaizen and kaikaku through the lens of the explore/exploit model. Kaizen is often translated from Japanese as “continuous improvement” or “change for better...
Harish Jose
It’s not easy to find topics to write about, and even if I find good topics, it has to pass my threshold level. As I was meditating on this, I started to think about procrastination and ambiguity....
Harish Jose
I recently read Jordan Ellenberg’s wonderful book, How Not To Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking (Penguin Books, 2014). I found the book to be enlightening and a great read....
Harish Jose
Today I will look at epistemology at the gemba. Epistemology is the part of philosophy that deals with the theory of knowledge. It tries to answer the questions, “How do we know things, and what...
Harish Jose
It’s been a while since I’ve written about statistics. So in this column, I will be looking at the rules of three and five. These are heuristics, or rules of thumb, that can help us out. They are...
