One of the key ideas in lean manufacturing is that defects should be detected as early as possible.

In 1500, China’s economy was the strongest in the world. But by the 19th century, the United States, Western Europe, and Japan had leapfrogged over China by churning out goods and services in vast quantities while the former superpower stalled.

You’ve set aside Sunday afternoon to bake some cookies, but you discover you have run out of eggs. Your partner in marital bliss has gone out and taken the car.

According to a recent LNS Research survey, 37 percent of quality leaders cite an inability to measure quality metrics as their No.

Last month I looked at how the fixed-width limits of a process behavior chart filter out virtually all of the routine variation regardless of the shape of the histogram.

If you think it’s hard to tell how you’re doing at your job, imagine being a hockey goalie. Let’s say you block every shot in a game. Was that performance due to your superior skills? Or maybe just to a lack of skill in your opponents?

The oldest myth about process behavior charts is the myth that they require “normally distributed data.” If you have ever heard this idea, or if you have ever taught this to others, then you need to read this article.

Pickleball is arguably the fastest-growing sport in the United States, especially among baby-boomer retirees.

As statistical methods become more embedded in everyday organizational quality improvement efforts, I find that a key concept is often woefully misunderstood, if it is even taught at all. W.

In a general sense, capability is the ability to do something. Within manufacturing, capability is given a much more specific definition. It is an expression of the accuracy of a process or equipment, in proportion to the required accuracy.