First, the introduction. This post was earnestly written by my friend, Jeff Fuchs.

With the use of statistical software, many individuals are being exposed to more than just measures of location and dispersion. In addition to the average and standard deviation, they often find some funny numbers labeled as skewness and kurtosis.

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Significant digits, the number of digits to the right of a decimal point that are warranted by the accuracy of the means of measurement, are a critical part of scientific investigation. In developing products and services, the concept is essential.

Of the 100 companies named to Fortune m

Story update 7/08/2011: We corrected an error in Figure 2, and in the section preceded by "Expressed symbolically for a stable process...".

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 in my

It seemed like a good idea at the time to Jon Shupenus, U.S. Army Forces Command’s process improvement specialist and lean Six Sigma Black Belt.

Not all customers are equally profitable. Different customers have different needs, and hence different costs to serve. The overall profitability of a business is a function of the profitability of individual customers and customer groups.

I greatly believe in training. I have been fortunate to work in businesses that also believed in having trained and qualified professionals in their organization.