In “The Power of Observation—Part 1,” we learned that a good portion of problem solving should be devoted to a thorough understanding of what’s going on before any corrective action steps are

Some authors recommend that you have to wait until you have the range chart “in control” before you can compute the limits for the average chart or the X chart. Why this is not true will be the subject of this column.

I often get assignments at organizations where I am required to take aside a group of people, either within the building facility or off campus, to focus on issues or problems.

This is an expanded version of an article that Balestracci wrote for Quality Digest in December 2007. 
--Editor

The most important element in producing a quality product or service is the attitude of the people doing the work—not only the worker—but the attitude of all levels of management.

A $1 billion annual budget may sound ample, but a few years ago, the costs of services ranging from law enforcement to cleaning county buildings had squeezed the government of Erie County, New York, to its limit.

The emergence of green technology and increased environmental awareness has prompted a paradigm shift in the way companies think about the design of their products.

One of the most useful diagnostic tools for understanding what is going on in a process is the statistical process control chart (SPC).  This is also a frequently misunderstood tool, and these misunderstandings lead to misdirected effort during a Six Sigma process,