When I was a guest on Quality Digest Live, co-host Dirk Dusharme asked me about hesitations that some health care professionals might have about the lean concept of “standardized work.

Although Quality Digest often has in-depth articles about the nuances of control charts, I’ve found that many beginners are at a loss to figure out how to organize their data, especially in service industries such as health care, hotels, and food.

Selecting the right control chart starts by knowing something about what you want the chart to say about the process—what questions do you want the chart to answer?

If you combine tough economic times with a presidential election year, you get a heightened interest in how the economy is changing. Is it growing faster or slowing down?

This is part two in a three-part series where we assess what information we can obtain from the various estimates of quarterly GDP growth using statistical analysis and a control chart.

What is the economic rationale for pursuing lean production? Much of the lean literature is concerned with the nuts and bolts of lean, and the economics of lean are somewhat less publicized.

Meet Betty and Bart Bickerson, husband-and-wife quality analysts who work at different companies. Betty and Bart argue about everything. They argue whether grey is a color. They argue whether tomato is a fruit.

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The information age is also the age of information overload.

Lean Six Sigma has proven itself as an effective strategy for business success in both private and public sectors. The methodology has helped enterprise leaders recognize business processes as engines that drive performance excellence and help to deliver value.