All Features
Forrest Breyfogle—New Paradigms
A previous article of mine in this newsletter, “NOT Transforming the Data Can Be Fatal to Your Analysis,” addressed the need for appropriate transformations and a predictive performance measurement system.
The statistical business performance charting (SBPC) methodology that was described in…
James O. Pearson
We have all had to plan a trip to the airport. Sometimes it goes well and sometimes not so well. One of the problems we have is dealing with the variation in the trip time to the airport. Since I travel to the airport a lot and like analyzing data, I keep track of my travel time to the airport.…
Steven Ouellette
If you have been following my articles over the last few months, you have seen that even though statistical process control (SPC) charts are very powerful tools for examining a process, it turns out that there are a lot of ways to mess up SPC. This month, I am going to finish up with a few more…
John Stiller
Story update 9/23/09: Reference to 9.5.2.f was changed to 8.5.2.f in second paragraph.
As more suppliers are required by their regulators and customers to achieve ISO 9001 certification, and because certification symbolizes a point of competitive differentiation in a tight economy, emphasis on…
Stewart Anderson
Is the theory of constraints compatible with lean thinking and can the two approaches be used together? This article looks at some of the similarities and differences between the two approaches and suggests how they might be coupled to advantage.
The book, Lean Lexicon: A Graphical Glossary for…
Forrest Breyfogle—New Paradigms
Not surprisingly, there was controversy over Forrest Breyfogle's article, "Non-normal Data: To Transform or Not to Transform," written in response to Donald Wheeler’s article "Do You Have Leptokurtophobia?" Wheeler continued the debate with "Transforming the Data Can Be Fatal to Your Analysis."…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
“Writing is not a job; it’s a hobby!” thundered my father when I told him my plans for college. “You need to get a profession: Medicine, law, engineering, or accounting.”
I cheerlessly acquiesced and enrolled in a pre-med program, but at the end of my first year, after struggling through…
Donald J. Wheeler
Following my article on Leptokurtophobics (Do You Have Leptokurtophobia?) it was almost inevitable that we should hear from one. We were fortunate to have someone as articulate as Forrest Breyfogle III to write the response. However, rather than offering a critique of the points raised in my…
Lonnie Wilson
Five things to lean my company? In two days? That's pretty quick. Why so quickly?
I can think of two reasons. First, people expect things to be done better and faster each day; and it appears we’re getting decent at doing just that. Lean has made huge strides toward contributing to that “…
Bill Kalmar
The band “Chicago” sang those words about "time" decades ago. The second line “Does anybody really care?” seems to sum up what is still in vogue today, especially in the workplace. Just as with vacations where workers are reluctant to leave for fear that someone will discover that their job is…
Michelle Paret, Eston Martz
Story update 8/27/2009: An error was spotted and corrected by author in paragraph starting with "The population mean for a six-sided die..."
Mark Twain famously quipped that there were three ways to avoid telling the truth: lies, damned lies, and statistics. The joke works because statistics…
Minitab LLC
Story update 8/27/2009: An error was spotted and corrected by author in paragraph starting with "The population mean for a six-sided die..."
Mark Twain famously quipped that there were three ways to avoid telling the truth: lies, damned lies, and statistics. The joke works because statistics…
Forrest Breyfogle—New Paradigms
Story update 8/24/2009: The original graphics for this story were missing key data due to errors in converting them. We have fixed the problem.
I
n “Do You Have Leptokurtophobia?” Don Wheeler stated, “‘But the software suggests transforming the data!’ Such advice is simply another piece of…
Steven Ouellette
Over the past couple of articles, we have explored how an incomplete understanding of how SPC limits are calculated can lead to constructing control charts that look strange. But using some of the things I mentioned, hopefully you can see that these “strange” control charts actually reveal quite…
David Boghossian
As the founder of PowerSteering and a practitioner in strategic management and continuous improvement for more than 25 years, I have seen my share of management fads come and go, and even been in the room when some of them were created.
There were quality circles and total quality management…
Li Zongming
Design of experiments (DOE) is a crucial tool in Six Sigma quality management and its application is widespread in Japan; nevertheless, many manufacturing companies in other countries have not formally adopted it because of its complex concepts and costs. As a matter of fact, the essence of the…
Raissa Carey
I
f you’ve been to Starbucks lately, you probably noticed the fast-paced employees working their java magic as they take orders from customers in line, not at the register, so that baristas can start the order, and sometimes finish it, before the customer even pays for it.
Yes, I’m all for…
Donald J. Wheeler
The symptoms of leptokurtophobia are (1) routinely asking if your data are normally distributed and (2) transforming your data to make them appear to be less leptokurtic and more “mound shaped.” If you have exhibited either of these symptoms then you need to read this article.
The origins of…
H. James Harrington
World War III has begun. This time it’s not a war of battleships, bullets and bombs—this is an economic war. The weapons are televisions, steel, cars, and clothes. This is a war where we have no allies. Every nation is out to capture more of its share of the U.S. and world’s market. We are being…
R. Eric Reidenbach Ph.D.
Pick up any article or book, attend any conference on Six Sigma, or talk with any Black Belt or Master Black Belt and you will hear the Six Sigma gospel about the importance of the voice of the customer. For example, in their book Six Sigma: The Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing the…
Tom Pyzdek
Today I received a sales call from a person interested in becoming a certified Six Sigma Black Belt. He had what I call a "can't do" personality. This is the diametric opposite of the "can do" person. This type of individual looks for reasons why a particular thing can't be done. How about a…
Tracy Willis
Do you hear Six Sigma professionals express frustration that the organization does not support their efforts?
Are there department heads in your life who have complained that their Six Sigma professionals are not delivering the needed results? And that each project is too time-consuming?…
Tom Pyzdek
In a recent post on the Evolving Excellence blog, Bill Waddell tackles one of my pet peeves: activity-based costing, or ABC. Few things do more harm to lean Six Sigma than this method of accounting. In fact, it is my opinion that the accounting systems used by U.S. businesses are responsible for a…
Stewart Anderson
Just the other week, I had the privilege of visiting with three or four companies that were doing lean process improvement. In every visit, each company invited me into their “war room” where they took great pride in showing me their process and value-stream maps and the other trappings of their…
Steven Ouellette
Have you ever met people who “do” statistical process control (SPC) only to get some screwy-looking control chart, and then text: OMG I H8 SPC! (If you don’t understand that, ask your nine-year-old child or grandchild.)
Last month we saw how it is not a failure of SPC, but rather an EBKAC (…