Five things to lean my company? In two days? That's pretty quick. Why so quickly?  

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.

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..."

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..."

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.

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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

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. 

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.

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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 thi