T here are three ways in which a standard costing system is typically used in a manufacturing company:

1. Performance measurement
2. Decision making
3. Inventory valuation

It is vitally important for lean people to know nothing when working on improvement. This sounds like a crazy idea, but it is another 100-percent turnaround from traditional management thinking.

The ability to make predictions has always been rewarded. Statistician Donald J. Wheeler says that “prediction is the essence of business.” With growing bodies of data and good analytical models, our predictions are getting better.

As a member of Minitab’s technical support team, I get the opportunity to work with many people using design of experiments (DOE).