From the perspective of data analysis, rare events are problematic. Until we have an event, there is nothing to count, and as a result many of our time periods will end up with zero counts.

For the last decade, people have come by my booth at the American Society for Quality (ASQ) World Conference on Quality and Improvement and asked: “Isn’t there a better way to implement Six Sigma that doesn’t cost so much or take so long?” Of course there is, but

Ask almost anyone what is the No. 1 requirement for Six Sigma success, and he will say: top leadership commitment.

Some lies you can see a mile away: “The check is in the mail.” “Your table will be ready in a few minutes.” “I didn’t say that.” “This won’t hurt a bit.” Add to this rather long list some lies of the lean variety. I’ve heard more than my fair share.

The quote “Baseball been berry, berry good to me” comes from one of my favorite Saturday Night Live skits from the late 1970s. Garrett Morris played Chico Escuela, a retired Hispanic baseball player who knew very little English.

I was listening to Alan Robinson present recently at the Lean Systems Summit about the power of “small ideas.” Alan wondered aloud why so many organizations

Regular tiered meetings are a staple of any company’s lean management system.

Any article about control charts leads to inevitable (and torturous) discussions of special cause tests—all nine of them. No wonder confused people continue to use things like trend lines. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

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?

A run chart is a graphical display of data over time. Run charts are used to visually analyze processes according to time or sequential order.