Watch the full video at:
http://www.isixsigma.com/implementation/change-management-implementation/change-anything/

Michael Cyger: Hey everyone. My name is Michael Cyger, and I’m the Founder and Publisher of iSixSigma.com – the largest community of lean and Six Sigma professionals in the world. At iSixSigma.com, we champion the idea that breakthrough process improvement can be accomplished by anyone within an organization.

We all have personal and professional goals, from increasing our personal income, career options, and fitness level to quitting smoking, losing weight, or fixing a personal relationship. There are a ton of self-help books out on the market. There are tons of programs. There are systems on the market. They all try to help you achieve your goals. But the problem is that they provide one way to solve a problem, and not everyone succeeds with one single system.

Ron McMillan is one of the authors of a new framework that I think can help you achieve any of your goals, regardless of the type of person you are. He’s the Co-Founder of VitalSmarts – a corporate training and organizational performance consulting firm.

Ron previously Co-Founded the Covey Leadership Center, where he served as Vice President of Research and Development. He’s the Co-Author of the New York Times Best Seller’s “Change Anything”, “Crucial Conversations”, “Crucial Confrontations”, and “Influencer”. And he’s the Co-Author of this book, “Change Anything”. The new science of personal success. Ron, welcome to the show.

Ron McMillan: Well, thank you, Mike, for having me.

Michael: Ron, I’ve read the book. As a Scientist, I love how you have the Change Anything Labs; where you conduct experiments and pour over hundred of research studies. I also love how the book is full of examples that actually use tactics that my audience can use. Not just great ideas that don’t help us when we’re at the lowest levels trying to change the way we behave or accomplish goals that just seem a bit out of our reach. How was it at the Change Anything Labs putting together the research that went into this book?

Ron: It was so exciting. We had such a good time. We made use of a lot of college interns and we studied over sixteen thousand articles on human behavior change. They were in Refereed Journals, major research efforts; and then having compiled that, we began looking for common sources, or common methodologies, of change. What does it take to change? We then added to that a study of five thousand people who were trying to make significant life change. This were things like overcoming a heroin addiction, losing a hundred pounds, overcoming anger issues in the workplace; significant life changes. Of these five thousand, roughly about forty-five hundred failed.

Michael: Wow.

Ron: Five hundred succeeded. And we defined success as not only had they achieved this major life change, but sustained it for three years. And we, of course, then compared the two populations and said, ‘What’s the difference?’ And all of that research led to Change Anything.

Michael: Excellent. Alright. So let’s give the audience an example and a little more depth about what’s possible to overcome, get past, or get unstuck – one of the words you use within the book. Let’s start with an example that you used in the beginning of the book. The example that illustrates that willpower is not the problem to accomplish goals that seem just out of our reach. Can you describe the marshmallow experiment?

Ron: Yeah. The marshmallow experiment was actually a replication of an experiment conducted almost thirty years ago, by Walter Michelle, at Stanford. And the experiment is real simple. You bring four five year olds into a room. It’s just them and the researcher. The researcher gives them a marshmallow and said, ‘You can eat this any time you want’. But I’m going to go out for a few minutes. When I come back, if it’s still there, I’ll give you two and you’ll have two to eat. And then the researcher leaves for a fifteen minutes. And, of course, we’re watching the kids on video to see what they do. And Walter Michelle found that about twenty percent of the kids were able to delay gratification and get two marshmallows.

Michael: Only twenty percent? One out of five.

Ron: Yeah.

Michael: So four of them downed that marshmallow within fifteen minutes.

Ron: Some of them did it right away. Others would sniff it, and then they would lick it, and over the fifteen minutes nibble little pieces; but till it was gone. Well, what was really interesting about this is Michelle then followed the two percenters for ten years. To see what had happened to them. And he found that they had significantly higher scores in IQ; in school mastery. He then conducted another five-year study and found out that these people were promoted more often, got the best jobs, and had greater success or happiness in marriage and relationships. Well, come along Albert Bandura of Stanford that said that is such an interesting study that delaying gratification has such an impact on future success, and it can be predicted from a four year old on. But he began wondering, ‘Is will a skill?’ Is willpower something that people just have – it’s a character trait – or is it something they could acquire? And he took kids, and he took just five minutes to teach them a little skill. If you want to wait and not eat the marshmallow right now and get two, then here’s some things you can do. And he taught them just some basic tactics that’s called shift attention. And it increased the numbers who were able to delay by fifty percent. So what we did is we just replicated that study and said, ‘Lets get some video on this. Let’s see if kids today are like kids back then’. And we found exactly the same results.

Michael: Alright. And so, for the statisticians in Lean Six Sigma, they’re going to look at this and say causation or correlation. Is there a direct relationship between the kids who could delay their satisfaction and the success that they achieved later on in life? Or it is just correlated but there’s no actual causation? Do you have any information on that Ron?

Ron: Yeah. It’s a great question. And we would say that when you acquire a skill like the ability to shift attention. It’s been demonstrated, with the addicts, with OCD, that if you fill this urge if you have this temptation and can shift your attention away from it for fifteen minutes, the power of the urge greatly diminishes and gives your greater ability to then choose your action rather than respond or react to the urge. And the thing is that’s a life skill that can be applied to doing your homework when you feel like playing. It can be applied to focusing when you’re distracted. And so, the question of who initially possesses that ability or not and is that causal or correlational success becomes almost irrelevant when you can demonstrate that the acquisition of this skill and its application dramatically improves those results. So having the skill and the ability, whether it’s conscious or not, creates that success.

Michael: I love that Ron. In business, when things fail, people get blamed. But in Six Sigma, we teach that people aren’t the problem. That it’s actually the process. So similarly, people always seem to blame themselves. They blame their character. They blame their willpower when they fail at something. But what you’re saying in this book is that character is not usually the root cause. It’s something else, right?

Ron: Yes. In fact, when we compared the forty-five hundred who failed with the major life change versus the five hundred who succeeded, we found that one of the big differences is something that we call the Willpower Trap. And it’s basically the idea that the key to me making personal change is summoning up willpower. Gutting it out. Being strong. And a funny metaphor that is obvious to all of us is: if you get a weightlifter who’s got huge muscles and I stand next to him. And you give us both a barbell. Say hold it out shoulder height and don’t drop it no matter what. Well, we know it’s a matter of time that, number one, I’m going to drop it. Like, how long can I hold it? Two minutes. Number two, the weightlifter with all the muscle is going to beat me and hold it longer, but the inevitability is gravity wins. Gravity even wins over the strong weightlifter. And that’s like willpower. If we’re trying to resist a really tough problem, and we gut it out, and we gut it out. Let’s say we’re trying to quit smoking. And it gut it out for two days, and then, we succumb and we light up. The next thing that happens is we tell ourselves a story about our failure. We say, ‘I am so weak’. ‘I can’t do this.’ ‘I’m flawed.’ And whether it’s smoking, or eating, or heroin, then we give up on ourselves and we binge and say, ‘What the heck’. And so, we go on this wild binge and then it just convinces us we’ll never be able to change. We call that the Willpower Trap. It’s the false assumption that willpower is the key to making change. We found, just as you said with systems, that it’s not willpower that makes us succeed or change. It’s the way six sources of influence impact us to change or not change.

Michael: Okay. That makes sense. And we’re going to talk about those six sources of influence, which are the crux of the book. Also, in the book, you use phrases like, ‘We’re blind’ and ‘If you can see it, you can change it’. As that sets the context for the book, what do those phrases mean Ron?

Ron: Well, at any given time, we’ve identified six sources of influence that influence us to do or not do something. And, for most people, they’re blind to these sources of influence. They’re not even aware they’re in operation in their life. As a result, they’re blind to these six sources of influence and they use willpower to try and change when they’re totally outnumbered. It’s one person against these six powerful sources of influence. We’re doomed to fail. Because we’re blind to the impact these sources of influence have on us, and we’re outnumbered six to one. We found the key to making change is to understand these six sources of influence and manipulate them so they’re working for the change rather than working against you making the change.

Michael: So just like in life, if you have a problem there may be – you know the phrase – more than one way to skin a cat. You can actually solve that problem multiple ways. What you’re saying is that there are multiple influences on us that are affecting us doing something that we don’t want to do. And by understanding these six influences and having tactics for not doing that action that you don’t want to take, you can succeed more often than not.

Ron: Yes. That’s correct. One way of saying that is, your world is perfectly designed to get you to do the thing you’re trying to stop doing. It’s perfectly designed. So what you do is you redesign your world so that it influences you to make the change you want to change. Basically, it’s a way of tricking ourselves. It’s a way of saying, ‘What is causing me to succeed or fail? And how can I manipulate those sources of influence to guarantee my success?’

Michael: Perfect. Okay. And you actually cite a study that if you use all of the tactics that affect these six sources of influence that you’re not just marginally more effective, you’re exponentially more effective. Is that correct?

Ron: Absolutely correct. And it’s sustainable. The average person who tries to quit smoking relapses five times. And most, on that fifth time, give it up. They say, ‘I can’t do it’. People who use the six sources of influence to help them make the change not only don’t relapse or have fewer relapses, but then are able to sustain the change and not relapse again once they finally succeed.

Michael: And anybody who does Six Sigma knows that Six Sigma is so powerful because it doesn’t do marginal improvement, it doesn’t do incremental improvement, it’s driving breakthrough improvement. You’re trying to change the entire system, the entire process, of how a business accomplishes something for the customer. And you make it sustainable. You put it in control. And so, that’s why I think this is such a great compliment to Six Sigma. Because you get exponential. If you follow the six sources of influence and you implement the right plan, you can get a ten times improvement, as your study has stated, a thousand time improvement, and you actually change the process so you don’t relapse. So, great way to start off the interview, Ron. But let me ask you this. Change isn’t easy. You stated in the book, and I’m citing some figures that you bring up, marriage counseling only works for fewer than one in five couples, ninety-eight percent of us fail to keep our resolutions to change bad habits, only one in ten dieters who have a history of obesity are able to lose weight and keep it off for one more years; and here’s the one we’re going to talk about a little more during the show. Eighty-five percent of us have bosses who have tried but failed to get us to change to improve our performance. So, what do we need to do Ron?

Ron: Well, if you go in the local bookstore, or you go on the Internet, and identify “your problem” – it’s you want to lose weight -, there are a hundred books written on how to lose weight. Then you go on another shelf and there’s fifty books written on how to deal with your anger in relationships. And then you go to another shelf and there are thirty books on how to overcome your alcoholism. What we found – and here’s the big, big thing -, and you mentioned it when you said this is a process, it’s a methodology, is those are not five different problems. They’re all the same problem. It’s, ‘How do I get myself to change?’ Once you understand the process of changing yourself, not only do you solve the big problem that’s holding you back from the results you really care about, then you can then train it on any problem in your life. And so, when you talk about breakthrough, the breakthrough results in a problem I’ve never been able to overcome is phenomenal, but then the fact that I can train that methodology on any problem in my life that I want to solve; that’s an amazing, amazing exponential breakthrough.

Michael: So, instead of going out and reading twenty books on how to advance my career, or twenty books on dieting, I know I need to lose weight; what I need to do is start by studying myself and how I interact with my diet? Is that what you’re saying?

Ron: Yeah. In fact, one of the principles we’ve identified is be the subject and the scientist. You’re the subject and the scientist. What we mean by that is there’s been all this study done on weight loss, but no one has studied you. How do you lose weight? And so, you’ve got to conduct that study. As a scientist, you can stand outside yourself and objectively observe yourself. In fact, most of us do this, but we don’t do it systematically. Have you every asked yourself, ‘Why did I do that?’ Why did I say that? Well, that’s you being the scientist examining yourself as the subject and trying to objectively understand why you do what you do. Right? So, as you try and make major change, though a lot of people have studied weight loss, you need to conduct a study on you. You need to say, ‘Why do I have problems losing weight?’ And begin studying, ‘When do I eat? When do I not?’ When am I strong and I succeed, and when do I fall off the wagon? And to begin to understand how you do things and why you do what you do helps you then to develop strategies that are specific to you. And so, be the scientist and the subject. We had a situation the other day in our office here. An e-mail went around to all the employees saying, ‘Someone left their keys in the downstairs refrigerator. If they’re yours, I’ve got them. Come get me’. And then people started replying saying, ‘Wow, that’s interesting. Does that keep keys longer so they don’t mildew?’ Put them in the fridge. How clever! Other said, ‘I lost my keys in the toilet once, but never the fridge’. And people were really having a fun time with this, and finally, Emily; she sends an e-mail. Says, ‘They’re mine’. She said, ‘I keep forgetting to take my leftovers home. So I put my keys on the leftovers so I can’t drive off without getting my keys, which reminds me to take the leftovers’. She knew something about herself. Rather than going to a retreat for six months to overcome her forgetfulness, she just said, ‘Why don’t I trick myself? I know I’m going to forget them. But if I put my car keys on them, I can’t drive away without them’. And so, having studied herself, and knowing her propensity to leave her leftovers, she devised a tactic to trick herself having known her tendency to succeed in something she really care about. And so, being the scientist and the subject, as you study yourself, you begin to realize, ‘I don’t need willpower to diet twenty-four hours a day. I just need to identify the three crucial moments when I’m most likely to fail. And devise a plan to address those three crucial moments. There are only three times a day that I’m likely to fail because of my habits. If I can modify those crucial moments and choose a vital behavior, I can succeed’. And so, that’s the idea of that principle.

Michael: That’s fantastic. And actually, Emily was practicing a tool that we teach in Six Sigma called Poka Yoke, which is the Japanese term for mistake proofing. And I do the same thing. Every time I come home, on the side in the entryway, I put my wallet, my keys and my sunglasses. Always in the same place. Always right next to each other. And I know I can’t forget any of them when I go to get in the car because I need my keys in order to drive the car. So, perfect example of a tactic. I wouldn’t even go as far as to say tricking. Because it sounds like it’s a game or something that may not work. I understand where you’re coming from, but it’s a tactic that works. It’s proven. It works in business. It works in your personal life. And it only fails when my wife takes my wallet because she wants some cash for something and then she puts it in a different place. And she does this over and over again. She messes up my mistake proofing system.

Ron: And, Mike, one thing I’d add about being the scientist and the subject is your tactic might not work for someone else because they have different habits.

Michael: Right.

Ron: That’s why you’ve got to study yourself and say, ‘How do I make this work for me?’

Michael: And that’s why I find this book that you and your co-authors have written so intriguing. Because it’s not a one size fits all, read my dieting book. Or one size fits all, read my professional management book. It is understanding ourselves. Identifying the crucial moments where we fail at doing something we want to do. Studying ourselves, as you say. Creating vital behaviors. What we’re going to do to change the way we engage with others or engage with ourselves. And then do that by identifying the six sources of influence. So let’s talk about those six sources of influences that you’ve identified in this book.

Ron: Great. Let me emphasize something you just said, and then I’ll explain the six sources. What we found is, if you can identify the crucial moments when you’re likely to succeed or fail and the vital behavior; that if you engage that crucial moment will guarantee your success. One woman – and I’ll use this example later in talking about the six sources and that might help -; but her doctor said she had to quit smoking. And she got really serious about it. At work it’s a non-smoking environment, so there’s never really a problem when she is at her desk. Her crucial moment was at break time. She would go outside, under the tree, in the shade, with all of her friends. And that’s called the Smoking Tree. And they would all smoke there, and catch up on things, and then go back to work. So if she was going to quit smoking, she doesn’t have to worry about the three hours at her desk in the morning. She has to worry about the smoking tree and the break. Now, she needed to identify what behaviors do I need to engage in in order to master that crucial moment? For her, it was talking to her friends. Say, ‘Hey, I got to quit smoking. Doctor says it’s important. Will you help me?’ They go, ‘Yeah, we’ll help you. What do you want us to do?’ ‘Number one, never offer me a cigarette. Number two, if I ask for one, say no.’ They said, ‘Sure. We’ll help you’. And all she had to worry about is breaks and lunch when she’s with her friends. And now she’s getting them to help her succeed. That’s mastering the crucial moment with the vital behavior that’s going to make the change. So, with the six sources of influence, we say, ‘How can I influence myself in those crucial moments to do the vital behavior?’ And that’s what it takes to change.

Michael: Alright. Well, that sounds pretty easy enough. Let’s go over the six sources of influence at a high level. And then we’ll maybe take a look at a work example and apply them, Ron.

Ron: Great.

Michael: The first source of influence is what?

Ron: Love what you hate. You’ve got to learn to love what you hate. Now, if we go into the science, this is called personal motivation. You got to create a personal motivation to make the change. That means you’ve got to decide you want to do it. There are many tactics to do this. Two that are really powerful to learn to love what you hate. Number one is to visit your default future. Most of us engaging in a bad habit affects our health, or affects our relationships, or affects our career. We have an infinite capability to push off the long-term consequences of this behavior and not think about it. Visit your default future says, ‘No. Think about it’. What will your future be if nothing changes? What’s going to happen to you in two years, five years, ten years? It’s amazing when you get baby boomers, like myself, and you sit down with them and find they have no savings. Zero savings. And they’re fifty-seven years old. What’s going to happen in retirement? They say, ‘I don’t want to think about that. I got bills to pay’. Well, let’s think about it. Let’s go to a retirement home. Let’s interview people. What happens when you’re seventy-two and you have no money? And as people visit the default future, and bring that long-term consequence to the present, that begins a powerful motivation that says, ‘You know, maybe I ought to want to change’.

Michael: Do they physically have to go do that, Ron, or can they do it in their head? Like, if I’m overweight, do I need to go visit an Obesity Center? Or if I am a smoke, do I need to go visit somebody who has emphysema, and lung cancer, and has lost a lung, and coughs all the time? Do I need to actually physically see it in order to get it in my mind?

Ron: There’s a marvelous researcher by the name of Miller. He found all that’s needed is a heartfelt interview. And he found that a therapist, a colleague, a coach, a mentor, a spouse can sit down with you and ask you a few questions. Say, ‘What will happen to you two years from today if you nothing changes?’ And you start talking about that. And say, ‘Does that matter to you? Why does that matter to you? What would that get in the way of that you really care about? What would that facilitate happening if you did make the change?’ And so, it’s actually just getting a person to think about it. Sometimes shock treatment helps. My partner’s daughter had juvenile diabetes. When she was sixteen they discovered she had it. And when she was seventeen she quit doing her testing at school because it was such a hassle. And she felt okay. What he did is he took her to a Dialysis Center. He says, ‘Honey, when you don’t manage your diabetes your kidneys fail and I want to meet some of the people who are going through a dialysis’. She spent a day helping the nurses and talking to the people. They never spoke about it again and she never missed another testing. So sometimes you need shock treatment. But for most of us, just talking it through with someone is enough to visit our default future; and that creates pretty strong motivation to say I think I want to make a change.

Michael: Okay. And you’ve got a lot of tactics in your book, “Change Anything”. What was the second tactic that you were going to mention that was really useful for personal motivation?

Ron: One of the changes we studied who had made this life change. She lost a hundred and thirty pounds, and at the time we interviewed her, kept it off for five years. She thought about where she was going and the things she didn’t like in her life, and she took a 3×5 card and wrote some things down. She knew she couldn’t always stay on the diet she planned for herself. But her crucial moment was, ‘When I’m ever tempted to break my diet, I’m going to pull out this 3×5 card from my purse. I’m going to slowly and thoughtfully read it, and then I can do whatever I want’. On her 3×5 card it said, ‘I want to have enough energy to play with my grandkids’. It said, ‘I want to like the way I look in the mirror’. The third one said, ‘I want my husband to be proud of how I look’. And the fourth is, ‘I want God to be pleased with my choices’. And that’s what was on her card. Now, how this worked for her is: she’s at a restaurant with her friends. They bring the dessert tray around. She goes, ‘Ooh, I really want that chocolate cake, but I made myself a promise’. She pulls out the card. By the time she finishes reading the card, she wants not to have that cake. She loves not eating the dessert. Because she’s reattached to what really matters.

Michael: Yeah.

Ron: So that’s called a motivational card. It’s just a simple technique to remind ourselves why we’re doing this. And at that moment, to want to wait to get the second marshmallow.

Michael: Got it. Okay. So, delaying the wants and desires or interrupting those impulses. Those relate to the personal motivation – the first source of influence. What about the second one, Ron?

Ron: The second one is do what you can’t.

Michael: Okay.

Ron: The scientific term for this is personal ability. What we found is to make significant life changes often requires a new set of skills we don’t possess. You have to learn those skills; acquire those skills. And there’s a whole body of literature on deliberate practice and how you can take a skill you don’t possess, study it, understand it; if you have a coach or mentor, they can show it to you. By practicing it, you can acquire that skill. For some of us, the skill we need to make the change is just knowledge. So, if you’re going to be more fit, if you’re going to make a change and do an exercise program, you kind of need to know what kinds of exercise will deliver the results you want; and how to do it without getting hurt. And so, this requires often study. You do a skill scan in your career and say, ‘What skills do I not possess that I need to possess in order to get to this next level? And where can I acquire them?’

Michael: So this may be one of those twenty self-help books on dieting, or relationship management, or business management. It’s gathering more skills so you can improve yourself.

Ron: Yeah. What’s the difference between me, who does not have a result I desire and those that do? What do they do that I don’t? How can I learn to do that? Yeah, it’s that easy.

Michael: It could be as simple as just asking those people what they do to stay fit, or what they do to not smoke again, or what they do to stay off of alcohol.

Ron: Yes. Exactly right.

Michael: Okay. Great. So that’s the second. That personal ability. Learning new skills. What’s the third source of influence?

Ron: Let me put the third and fourth together because they’re so closely associated.

Michael: Okay.

Ron: The third is turn accomplices into friends. The fourth is getting a coach or mentor. And this is social. How do the people in my environment affect my success or failure? We say, literally, you can divide your world into friends, who will help me succeed with the change, and accomplices, who will help me fail. And there are three principles. Number one: distance yourself from accomplices. You don’t need those people in your life. We found for severe drug addiction, they literally had to cut off any contact with former friends. No contact at all. Now, for some changes, that’s too severe of a tactic for your life. You remember AJ, the woman who wanted to quit smoking and went to the smoking tree?

Michael: Yeah.

Ron: You cut yourself off from accomplices. The second principle is adding friends. Like exercising with a friend. Say, ‘Hey, do you want to jog together?’ Mutual reinforcement; encouragement; accountability. And the third is add friends, distance yourself from accomplices, or convert accomplices into friends. And that’s what AJ did at the smoking tree. These people who influenced her to smoke – she asked them to help her make the change. And they were loyal friends and said, ‘Absolutely. We will’. And so, as you add friends, distance yourself from accomplices, you have the social motivation and ability. Often coach or mentor will help you in the crucial moment; say, ‘You know why that didn’t work?’ And they go, ‘No’. It’s because you didn’t do this. And they go, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s right. Okay. Next time I’m going to that’.

Michael: Yeah. And sometimes it’s so easy for your friend or accomplice to see that because they’re on the outside looking in. It’s difficult for us to see that. So that’s a great point.

Ron: The single most powerful tactic we observed in people making life changes is convert their spouse into a friend. And the spouse is going to be with you a lot, going to observe you a lot, and going to help you make this change. Or a close friend. Or someone you work with all the time. Someone who’s with you a lot to help you is just a phenomenal addition to a change plan.

Michael: Yeah. Great point. Okay. So we talked about social motivation and ability, turning accomplices into friends, distancing yourself from some people that just have bad habits that you just don’t want to continue, and then get new friends – a coach or a positive reinforcement.

Ron: Yes.

Michael: So what is the fifth social influence Ron?

Ron: The fifth we call reward small successes.

Michael: Okay.

Ron: The scientific term is structural motivation. What are the things in my environment that affect my motivation to make the change? We found, as corny as it sounds, that a lot of the people who are successful broke the task into small steps – and that shouldn’t be new to any of us in quality, right? -, they had clear measurable goals for each step, and they rewarded themselves when they accomplished it. Now, the reason that seems so corny is it’s taking money from your left pocket and giving it yourself in the right and saying, ‘Yay! I got ten bucks’. But it was yours all along. Well, it works! We found it works.

Michael: It does. Yeah.

Ron: One guy who had made a commitment to acquire a new skill set, but it required a lot of study in the evening. And that was a real bummer because he worked hard all day. And so he said, ‘I’ve got to read this text by two weeks. And then this one and this one’. And he rewarded himself by sticking two hundred bucks in a jar every time he accomplished one of the two week steps. Now, his wife agreed with him – you got to do this. His goal was at the end of his change effort, when he had acquired the skill and done all the study, he was going to buy himself a mountain bike. A seventeen hundred dollar mountain bike, which he felt guilty buying because it comes out of the family funds. But the wife says, ‘This will really help you succeed, so yes, do it’. And every time he put two hundred bucks in that jar, he celebrated. He was that much closer to his bike, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Ron: Well it’s silly, but it works for us! It works for us to reward the steps toward success.

Michael: Yeah. Definitely. It’s funny. I think a lot of us do this subconsciously in our day-to-day life and don’t even realize that this is one of multiple ways that our behaviors can change. My son can’t stay in his bed in the evening. So we use a sticker chart on the refrigerator. And every time, in the morning, he comes down and he stayed in his bed all night, he gets a sticker. It’s amazing how he went from four nights coming down and crawling in our bed with us to now he’s up on three weeks in a row staying in his bed. And my daughter is at a certain age. Love her, but she’s got this tendency to always want to argue a little bit. And every time she doesn’t argue with us during the day for nonsensical reasons, she gets a sticker. And the funny thing was, I got this habit. You know your family is always going to love you, regardless of how you act unfortunately. And I’ve got this habit of losing my temper sometimes and raising my voice. And my daughter explained to me that she doesn’t like that. She doesn’t like the behavior. And so she said, ‘Dad, every time you raise your voice and call me Miriam instead of Mia, then you need to take a dollar out of your wallet and put it in this jar over here’. And a dollar really doesn’t have an effect on me, but the funny thing was I did it once and I saw how it felt, and I never did it again. I never raised my voice. And now there’s no jar even on the side table anymore to remind us to do this. I just don’t raise my voice anymore. Because now it’s more of a conscious decision for me not to do that. So I think that structural motivation is really important. And you actually give an example of a negative structural influence in the book as well. Can you talk about that?

Ron: Yeah. The examples you gave are so powerful. And we think that’s silly; getting yourself to change with a dollar, but it works. As we were doing research for this, we stumbled upon loss aversion. And there’s a strong argument that says that’s even more motivating than gain. We think, you know, you pay a commission to a salesperson. Say make a sale, you get a thousand bucks and that’s really motivating. It could be that a much stronger motivation is fighting so as not to lose the thousand dollars. And there are several experiments with cite in the book, but let me just tell you one that is a practical example I saw, here, in the workplace. We’re located in Provo, Utah. And there’s a University called Brigham Young University here in Provo and up in Sale Lake is the University of Utah. And, boy, are they awful rivals. Powerful rivals. Especially around football. Well, two colleagues here at work challenged each other to lose weight together. And they set their weekly goals, which were different from each other; but if you failed to accomplish your weekly goal, you have to give the other guy fifty bucks. And he’s already got the envelope mailed out. It’s to the Alumni Association of the school you hate. So, if you failed to get your goal, you give me fifty bucks and send it to University of Utah’s Alumni Association and specify the Football Program. And I’ll tell you, that is such a powerful motivation. I do not want to give that fifty bucks to the University of Utah. And that’s loss aversion. Often we can build in ‘I have to give up something that I don’t want to give up if I fail’ in the step.

Michael: Yeah. That’s a great example. Because a lot of time that’s more powerful than anything you might gain from saving, or things like that.

Ron: Yeah.

Michael: Alright. So let’s talk about the last social influence and then I want to get into a work example. What is the last influence Ron?

Ron: Control your space.

Michael: Okay.

Ron: The science behind this is structural ability. What we found is the environment has an incredible impact on whether we engage in these vital behaviors or not. And most of us are oblivious to the power of environment. One of these changers that we studied. She said, ‘You know what I realized?’ She said, ‘I’m really, really good in following my diet all day long’. She said, ‘I’m really focused’. She goes, ‘I’ve got energy. I’m accomplishing things at work’. And she goes, ‘I do really well’. She says, ‘Then I go home alone to my apartment. And it’s evening; it’s getting close to bed, but I can’t go to bed yet’. And she says, ‘I get an attack of the munchies’. And she said, ‘That’s when I blew it’. That’s when I eat all this stuff that isn’t good for me – late at night. And she said, ‘That’s what makes it impossible for me to lose weight’. She decided instead of me going on a diet, why don’t I put my house on a diet. I said, ‘What did you mean?’ She said, ‘I have a rule: nothing that violates my diet is allowed in my house. Nothing’. So, ten thirty at night, she’s in her jammies, she gets the munchies, she goes to the fridge; there is no chocolate cake. There is no ice cream. Now, she knows herself well enough that at ten thirty at night she’s not going to change her clothes, get in her car, and drive to convenience store fifteen minutes away.

Michael: Right.

Ron: She’s just going to go without the munchies or eat something healthy. So the structural environment – why not put your house on a diet instead of you being on a diet? Structural environment – what do I surround myself with that affects my ability to keep my plan? And they can range from putting your house on a diet to a reorganizing your routine during the day; so that you actually schedule a time to be at the gym rather than if you get a chance, you’ll drop by.

Michael: Right.

Ron: The basic principle here is making the good things easy and the bad things hard.

Michael: So it also could be (Unclear 46:10.2) your work environment so you know where everything is so you can do your job more effectively.

Ron: Yeah.

Michael: It could be those inspirational quality posters that so many people think are cheesy, but actually drive a behavior. Well, some of them are cheesy, but drive a behavior that we want to employees to think about. Or even those control charts of our process that we put up to say look how we’re doing, or work days since a lost work day event. Those are all physical environment options to help us either don’t do something or think about doing something.

Ron: Yeah. Cues, reminders, reinforcement, data stream – what data do I make available to myself? That’s going to drive a lot of my behavior. It’s the stickers on the fridge at your home, right?

Michael: Yeah. Alright. So let’s talk about the work environment. Because most of the people watching this show, Ron, they’re going to say, ‘Wow! I really need to change a lot of stuff in my personal life’ that this is going to be useful for. And they’re probably going to get this book, and I recommend it. But let’s talk about a work environment. What’s a good example of somebody who’s in a work environment that wants to change, and how would they go about using these six sources of influence to go about affecting that change?

Ron: Good question. Let me give the example of Thomas. He was one of the people we studied who failed to make the life change that he wanted. And learned some of these things, and made the life change and has succeeded, and he’s down the road eighteen months doing fantastic. Thomas was considered, by most of the people he worked with, to be one of the most motivated people in office. He was a great employee. People who worked with him said, ‘You need some help? Thomas will jump in and help you’. They loved him. Thomas’ boss sat down with Thomas and said, ‘Thomas, you’re great in so many ways, but you fail to bring in your projects on time on budget. And Thomas, if you can’t improve that within the next year, there are going to be severe consequences’. Thomas worked really hard on this. He was so motivated. He wanted to make this change. A year later, the boss put him on probation. Two years later, Thomas was fired for not being able to deliver on time. Now, when we talked to Thomas, he understood the problem. He didn’t deliver on time, and he really wanted to deliver on time, and he had worked so hard during that year to deliver on time, and he was fired for failing to make that change. So we talked to Thomas. We did a little interview saying, ‘Can we walk you through how you do your work? Can we walk you through who do you interact with; what are your projects; why do they fall behind?, and it became quickly clear to us. And as soon as we began pointing it out, it was instantly clear to him. Thomas was raised in a culture where it was very difficult to say no to people. And especially difficult to say no to those are in authority. Thomas was a pleaser. Nothing wrong with being a pleaser, as long as you know your boundaries and keep those boundaries. Thomas was unable to do that. So Thomas, with all the best intentions, would get going on a project and then people would say, ‘Thomas, can you help us over here? Thomas, can you take this special project?’ A vice president said, ‘Thomas, we really need you to study this’. And he gets overwhelmed. Plus he found it hard to hold people accountable. To go to someone and say, ‘(Unclear 50:16.5) not done; what’s going on?’ He couldn’t do that. He’d say, ‘Hey, are you going to get it on time?’ They go, ‘Yeah, we’ll be pretty close’. And they would slip, and he would slip, and he would fail. Now, for you and I, who may not have this particular weakness that seems so silly, seems so obvious. To someone who struggled with that, it was insurmountable. He said, ‘What do I do? Change out my brain for another brain? Change out my heart for another heart? How can I be a different person?’

Michael: Right.

Ron: So, working with Thomas, I identified the crucial moment, which is when someone makes a request that’s going to interfere with your plan. That’s a crucial moment. He doesn’t have to work twenty-four hours a day to make this change. He’s just got to look out for the crucial moments. When someone comes and says, ‘Tom, I got a request for you’. He goes, ‘This is the crucial moment’. For Thomas, the vital behavior was to say, ‘If it’s up here, I’m sorry. I would like to help you. I’m totally scheduled out. I cannot’. Okay? That’s the skill. If it’s a boss, say, ‘I will do whatever you want me to do, but I want you to understand the tradeoffs. If I do this, this is going to slip’.

Michael: Right.

Ron: So it’s a simple dialogue skill, which Thomas did not possess. So, now he knows the vital behavior. He’s got the crucial moments. Now he needs to create a plan and to get the six sources of influence working for him rather than against him. Source one – personal motivation. Love what you hate. How do you love telling someone no? How, in the moment, do you want to tell them no more than you want to tell them yes? Well, Thomas found that as soon as he learned a few simple skills, source two, a few scripts that he could use to respectfully turn someone down, that it worked for him. And when it worked, it wasn’t uncomfortable. They didn’t hate him thereafter. He began to have confidence. ‘I can do this. And when I do, good things will happen.’ So, source one and two were closely united for Thomas. When he learned how to effectively say no, then in fact he was more confident and wanted to use that skill.

Michael: So his impulse was to say yes. He identified it as a crucial moment. And then his skill was getting the scripts that he could say in each case to each person so that he wouldn’t have to do that, which was the behavior he wanted.

Ron: Yes. And what he was so afraid of is they wouldn’t like him or they wouldn’t respect him.

Michael: Right.

Ron: But when he learned how to do it respectfully, he found it didn’t impact the relationship. In fact, it made him better because they knew when they could count on him. Now, by the way, our training program, Crucial Conversations, or our book, Crucial Conversations; that’s one of the reasons it’s gotten such attention. It’s because it’s a skill set a lot of us don’t have in the workplace to do such things like that.

Michael: Yes. And I have read that book also. It’s a fantastic book about having effective conversations.

Ron: Good. Thanks, Mike. So, back to Thomas. Source three and four – social motivation; social ability. When Thomas did a social scan of his environment and he said, ‘Who helps me succeed; who helps me not?’, it was very easy to identify the people who pulled him off track. Those were his accomplices.

Michael: Those were the same people over and over again, typically?

Ron: Yeah. Often his peers and occasionally peers of his boss who had more authority than him, but didn’t report to.

Michael: Right.

Ron: And so, what he began doing is going to those that he had frequent interaction with and say, ‘I’m really focused on this project. It’s of vital importance. If you need me to do something else, go ahead and ask. But if I tell you no, then I want you to go elsewhere. Because I really mean it when I say no and it’s because of this project, not because of our relationship’.

Michael: Right.

Ron: So basically, in our vernacular, he clarified expectations with the people he works with. And he didn’t have to convert anybody. He didn’t have to avoid anybody. He just needed to get really clear with people how this works.

Michael: Yeah.

Ron: Source five – structural motivation. He identified something that was really interesting. We didn’t think of this, but he did. He said, ‘I need to change where I eat lunch’. We said, ‘What do you mean?’ He usually brought his lunch and ate it at his desk while he worked because he had so much to do, or just skipped lunch. He began carving out forty-five minutes for lunch and going where his coworkers went to eat lunch. He began, consciously, eating lunch with them. Sitting at their table. Talking with them about what’s going on in their life and his. Not only did they better understand some of the issues he was juggling, but they came to care about him and wanting him to be successful because he’s a friend. And he understanding better why they would ask for the things they asked for. And creating that relationship with others happened by a structural change. Where I eat my lunch. And it was amazing how that created relationships that formed a better context for the work environment.

Michael: Yeah. See, I thought you were going to say that most of these inquiries came when he was eating lunch and people were just walking by, and they had more free time. And if he found himself in that environment, he could remove himself and go eat lunch some place else and he would less inquiries coming in.

Ron: Yeah. And that’s why you be the scientist and the subject. For some, that would be exactly the case. Not for Thomas.

Michael: Exactly. Alright. So that’s the structural motivation, and brining in the workers to help out. Any other sources of influence that you found with Thomas?

Ron: Source six – structural ability. He began structuring project meetings. Where instead of him running around to find out how people are doing, once a week they come together, report on their progress, report on problems, the need for help, and he holds them accountable. And just a structural change, where we schedule our meetings frequently with those involved with the project did wonders. And you and I; that would be second nature, but Thomas had never thought of it. It never occurred to him. A meeting was seen as time away from work, and he had to work. Well, now think of Thomas. He’s trying to make a very significant change in his life – this managerial style. Right?

Michael: Right.

Ron: What if he tried to make that change without acquiring the new skills? What would you predict for him?

Michael: Well, he would be doomed to fail. Over and over again, like he had been.

Ron: What if he tried to make that change and learned the skills, but in fact never had those conversations with people? In the crucial moment gave in. Crashed. Yeah?

Michael: Yeah.

Ron: What you begin seeing is his world was perfectly designed for him to fail. What he needed to do is restructure his world by focusing on the six sources of influence that influenced his failure or success and aligning those. That brings us to the last principle. Now, you’re going to be amazed and bedazzled. Are you ready?

Michael: I’m ready.

Ron: It’s bad days are good data. We find when people believe in the willpower trap and they fail, they tell themselves a story. ‘I’m weak. I’ll never succeed.’ People who use this approach – ‘When I fail, I go ha! This is an opportunity to learn something about myself. Why did I fail in that moment? What did I miss? Why didn’t I succeed?’ And they analyze it and adjust their plan to include that situation going forward. The problem isn’t they lack willpower. The problem is their plan was insufficient. And so, bad days are good data. Damn! I wish I hadn’t had that dessert. Why did I do that? Why did I do that this time? Instead of ‘I give up; I’ll never succeed; let me binge’, I said, ‘I think I didn’t decide in advance. I waited till the moment to decide to have dessert or not. From now on, whenever I was in a restaurant, I will not have dessert. That’s my decision’. So, that’s an example.

Michael: Alright. But in one of the cases, actually in the work example of the book, Ron, you talk about the fact that he identified three vital behaviors that top performers within any business exhibit. They know their stuff. They can execute the job better than anybody else. They know the Tax Law. They know the Financial Law. They know their stuff. And they focus on the right stuff. They do the things that are expected of them in order to rise up the ranks, or be fully satisfactory in their job, or be excellent in their job. But the third thing you identified was build a reputation for being helpful. Now, what would you recommend to Thomas in that case, where he had a reputation for being helpful, but it caused him to do behaviors that his boss didn’t like? How do you reconcile the fact that in order for us to be thought of us vital to the business that we need to build a reputation for being helpful? You volunteered to come on the show when I asked you to. You’re being helpful, and you’re showing that you’re an industry thought leader on the topic. But what if you just decided that was going to take up too much time and you just didn’t have time to do that?

Ron: That’s a great question. As we studied people who had been very, very successful in their place of business as defined by those who worked with them, and compared them with those who weren’t, it really became clear those were the three big differentiators. On build a reputation for being helpful; like most things in life, it’s a balancing act. Right? So it beings with you knowing your boundaries, which Thomas was never able to define. Okay? I’ve got X amount to do and it’s going to take Y amount of time. I need a plan to do that. Okay? Now, with that clearly in mind, I’m in a better position to evaluate trade-offs. So, seeing as being helpful, I know that I’ve got some slack, and it’s this much. And when people make a request, I evaluate that with a tendency to help. My tendency is to help them out. Now, it’s because I want the organization to succeed, I want them to succeed. But there’s some political advantage to me being helpful to others and being seen as an expert. So, manage the parameters. Manage my time. Know if I say yes to this, what am I saying no to. The second thing is taking initiative. And this is where most of us trip up. Taking initiative. For me to be thinking about Sarah and her team, and to approach Sarah and say, ‘Sarah, I was thinking about the problems you were wrestling with and I have an idea that might be of help’. Or, ‘Sarah, I was thinking about problems you’re dealing with. One of my people; they just finished up on something. If I loan them to you, would that help you?’ So I’m anticipating others needs, and anticipating others problems, and I take initiative. And often it isn’t with giving you a whole love time of mine, which is scarce, but giving you ideas; suggestions; strategies. When we leave that encounter, you say, ‘Wow! That was so nice of Ron to come help me with that idea. That was so nice of Ron to be thoughtful of me. And now I see Ron as someone who’s really helpful’. Now, when decisions come about promotions, and teams, and advacement and all that, you look around and say, ‘Who makes a difference?’ The people who are helpful; they make a real difference. And so that gives you brownie points, but even more important, you are making a difference and people value results.

Michael: Yeah. Fantastic points. Alright. Let me give the audience a quick breakdown, since I have it so nicely in my outline here. We need to study ourselves. We need to identify our crucial moments when we’re susceptible to those failure moments that we so often don’t want. We need to create the vital behaviors by engaging in all six sources of influence, including the personal motivation, the learning new skills, the eliminating the bad social pressures and implementing good social pressures, like getting a coach or a friend on your side. Linking real rewards or punishments for the habits and getting those visual cues to focus on our goals or getting things out of our house, for example. There’s a lot more if you go and you get this book, Change Anything. The web address is ChangeAnythingBook.com. I’m selling it like I’m getting a commission here, Ron, but I’m doing it because it’s a really good book. I appreciate all the stories and examples in here. And I appreciate the work that you’ve put in here with me to make this interview as solid as I know the audience is going to find it.

Ron: Well, thank you very much Mike. And I just love working with you and your passion for the subject. And I would just reinforce what you’re doing; what a difference it makes. Quality included quality of life. And when we’re trying to improve quality, we’re improving quality of life. Meaning and purpose are such an important part of that. And everything that your listeners have learned about quality in the workplace applies to improving quality of life; including analyzing our processes and actions. And so, I think this will fit really well with where you all are and where you’re trying to go.

Michael: Yeah. So, guys, go get the book. Use the book. Then come back and let me know what changes you’re making. Go to ChangeAnythingBook.com. Learn more. Watch the videos. you can get more informed about this. If you have a follow-up question for Ron, please post it in the comments below this video. And then when we have a few question, I’ll ask Ron to come back and answer as many as he can. This is the point in the show, Ron, where I also urge the audience if you receive value out of this interview, and I know that I did, please take a moment and say thank you. It’s as easy as posting a comment below the show saying, ‘Love the topic. Love the tactics. I’m going to get check it out, or I’m going to go implement something I heard in the show’. Sending a tweet on Twitter. Ron’s company handle is VitalSmartsNews. Or posting on Facebook.com at VitalSmarts. Please take a minute to do so. I’m going to say thank you again by mentioning VitalSmarts website at VitalSmarts.com. Change Anything book at ChangeAnythingBook.com. And on the site, you’ll find some terrific case studies and research.

Ron McMillan, Co-Founder of VitalSmarts. Thank you for coming on the iSixSigma show, sharing your knowledge, and helping others become more successful change agents and business leaders.

Ron: Thank you, Mike. Thanks everyone.

Michael: Thank you all for watching. We’ll see you next time.

Watch the full video at:
http://www.isixsigma.com/implementation/change-management-implementation/change-anything/

How the Survey Is Completed

Data for the Annual iSixSigma Global Salary Survey is collected from the iSixSigma Job Shop, where participants answer several required questions (e.g., location, highest level of education, salary range, etc.). Only information from those who provided or updated their information within the prior 12 months was included in the analysis.

This year’s salary survey includes responses from 1,305 participants.

Please note: Survey participants provide salary information by ranges, beginning at < $20,000, then $20,001 to $25,000, continuing at increments of $5,000 to the final salary range of > $200,000. In analyzing the salary data, each range was converted to the median salary for that specific range. For example, < $20,000 was calculated to be $17,500; $20,001 to $25,000 was calculated to be $22,500; and so on.

Role Definitions

Black Belt: Full-time professional who leads Six Sigma projects. Typically has four to five weeks of classroom training in methods, statistical tools and team skills. Sometimes provides coaching and Six Sigma expertise to Green Belts.

Master Black Belt: An expert in Six Sigma methodology and statistical tools who provides strategic Six Sigma guidance within a specific function or business unit. An MBB often has prior experience as a BB. Responsible for coaching, mentoring and/or training BBs, an MBB often helps the Six Sigma Deployment Leader and Champions keep the initiative on track.

Champion: Middle- or senior-level executive who sponsors a specific Six Sigma project or effort, ensuring that resources are available and cross-functional issues are resolved.

Deployment Leader: Senior-level executive responsible for implementing Six Sigma enterprise wide. Typically reports to higher C-level executives. Responsible for developing, implementing and maintaining a standardized, company-wide quality system focused on customer satisfaction, defect prevention and continuous improvement.

Quality Professional and Quality Executive: While not universally regarded as Six Sigma roles, QPs and QEs may have Six Sigma responsibilities and qualifications.

Business Professional: Although they may not be in Six Sigma roles currently, the majority of these professionals possess Six Sigma certification and may have project experience. This is the second year BPs are included in iSixSigma’s Global Salary Survey.

Watch the full video at:
http://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/statistical-analysis/understanding-spc/

Hi everyone. My name is Michael Cyger and I’m the founder and publisher of iSixSigma.com – the largest community of Lean and Six Sigma professionals in the world and the resource for learning to drive breakthrough improvement.

Here’s what we do here: We bring on successful lean and six sigma business leaders; we learn from their experiences; and they share their strategies and tactics with you. Then, when you have a success to share, you can come on the show and give back as today’s guest is going to do.

Now, today’s show is a bit different. Instead of bringing on a statistical genius and watching me stammer and stutter trying to ask insightful questions, I decided to head over to Seattle and join part of a week-long training session provided by Minitab.

The instructor is Eduardo Santiago, and I thank Eduardo for welcoming me into his classroom for an hour of the course and allowing me to video tape it. I also want to thank David Costlow at Minitab’s headquarters for helping facilitate the session.

Whether you’re learning about statistical process control for the first time or, like me, you’re using this video as a refresher, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s packed full of information and a tremendous resource.

Here’s your program.

Eduardo Santiago: The next topic is Statistical Process Control. So what we’re going to be talking about here – we have a few concepts on the right hand side. We’re going to be talking about something called common cause variation versus special cause variation. We’re also going to talk about the concept of rational subgroups and why do we need to collect the data in rational subgroups. We’re going to try to motivate that. We’ll talk about something that is typically known as phase one and phase two for control charts. Then later on, the obvious concepts of when is a process in control and when is the process out of statistical control. Then after that, we’re going to discuss the eight different tests for identifying special causes of variation. And finally, later on in this chapter, we will talk about stages, okay? It’s a very important concept. Okay?

So, the father – a lot of people actually say that the father of modern statistical quality control – is Walter Shewhart. And he’s the one who actually created these tools to monitor the quality of a process. He was working at Western Electric Company; so they were the manufacturing arm of AT&T. And manufacturing was a little different back then – in the twenties and thirties. So sometimes – just to know what is a typical situation; what is a typical scenario in which we can actually apply – the control chart, we have to think about the manufacturing back in the twenties and thirties. Okay? It doesn’t mean that it is no longer applicable. But you have to think about what were the assumptions to actually apply these tools. Okay?

So, before that. Before Shewhart actually came up with Statistical Quality Control Charts, what were people doing? What were quality departments? Well, quality was limited to, basically, someone in final inspection doing a hundred percent inspection. So before control charts were established as a tool for monitoring a process, quality was forced. Okay? You basically did a hundred percent inspection and separated – hopefully – all the product that was actually non-conformant to customer specifications.

And one of the things Shewhart realized is that companies didn’t really understand variation. Customers did not actually understand what affects variation. And that’s where the concept of common cause versus special cause variation comes into play. Okay?

So, what is a control chart? Let’s go to page 3-3 on your books. So the agenda for this section is going to be very simple. We’re going to be talking about control charts for continuous data and control charts for attribute data. So, I think you’ve all seen – and just raise your hand. Who has already used, or seen, control charts? So the majority, I assume. Okay.

So, what is a control chart? Well, what we got here is something that we call the centerline. And then we have two other limits here that we typically refer to them as the upper control limit and the lower control limit. Not to be confused with specification limits, okay? These are different, okay? Typically, a specification is provided by the customer. A control limit is determined by the process itself. Okay? And a lot of times people struggling understand this: that control limits are not your specs. A specification limit is determined, always, by the customer. While a control limit is really determined by the process itself.

So, what are control limits really doing? Well, what Shewhart did. He said, ‘Well, I’m going to assume, here, the process behaves, maybe, normally distributed. And I’m going to create a graphical tool that allows me to monitor this stability of a process parameter’. So the simplest case; just to keep it very, very simple – let’s think about the mean. Let’s think about the mean of the process. So the idea of these control charts is to determine limits, which we call the lower control limit and the upper control limit, such that if the mean does not change – if a mean of a process is steady over time – most of the points recorded will be well contained within the control limits. You may have something like this – some randomness. Something like that, right? So what is the percentage? 99.73%. In other words, if the mean of the process does not change, you would expect most of the points – 99.73% of the points – to fall within the control limits. And that’s the way we calculate the control limits.

So, for instance, here – one simple mechanism. You’ve probably seen it before. It’s X-double bar is the average of all the subgroup averages. It’s the average of all these averages. And here, for the upper control limit, a simple formula would be X-double bar plus three times the standard deviation estimated from the data divided by, something that we call, the square root of the subgroup size. I’ll talk about that in just a second. And here it would be kind of the same idea. X-double bar minus three times the estimate of the standard deviation, which would be divided by the square root of the subgroup size.

Now, in essence, all it is, is the centerline plus or minus three times some standard deviation. Just to keep it in very simple terms, all it is – the control limits is the centerline. The centerline plus or minus three times the standard deviation.

Okay. So one of the things Shewhart noticed is that in practice in manufacturing a lot of times, even though we assume the data follows a normal distribution, it doesn’t quite happen like that. When you start collecting data from a real manufacturing process, the data does not behave normally distributed. Most of these control charts work under the assumption that there is some underlying normal distribution. So what he did – he basically came up with the concept of rational subgroups. Anyone familiar with that? What is a rational subgroup? A rational subgroup is, essentially, a point in time in which are going to go to the process, right? And the conditions will be fairly similar that allow you to actually obtain not just one sample, but more than one sample at the same time. Not at the same time. Say, you go to to the process from 8AM to 9AM and you get six samples completely at random. You’re assuming that the characteristics of those six observations will be fairly similar. And then you might go to the process again from 12PM to 1PM and get six more samples. So the idea of sampling more than one part at a time is what actually is called rational subgroups. And sometimes this is not feasible.

Now, why do you think he recommended the use of rational subgroups? Why do you think he actually said it’s a good idea that whenever you sample from the process, you get more than one part a time? You get, maybe, five. You may get ten, fifteen parts. Why do you think?

Student: More than 100?

Eduardo: That’s right. Exactly. So he knew that a lot of times data in manufacturing was not going to be normally distributed. Well, it turns out if the data is not normally distributed, but you collect the data in subgroups, the averages will tend to behave like a normal distribution. And that’s the result known as the Central Limit Theorem.

So let’s go to page 3-5. This is example one – color consistency. And the problem goes like this. A company uses plastic pellets to manufacture outer cases for computer monitors. They want to evaluate whether the color of the cases is consistent over time.

Data Collection. Quality inspectors randomly collect five cases every four hours over an eight-day period. The color of each case is assessed using the L-star Valley of the LAB Color Scale.

Let’s go ahead and open color one. So everyone, please go ahead and click on open project. The name of the data set is Color Number One. Just beware there’s a couple of them. The one we want is color number one. So let’s talk about how the data was collected over time. So here we’re measuring the color of these plastic pellets that will be used for the outer case of a computer. So it’s really important that there’s consistency, right? That the color is consistently the same. So that when you use two different units, they look alike. So the way we collect the data is by going to the process every four hours and collecting five samples. So here, are we using rational subgroups? The answer is yes, we are using rational subgroups. And what is the subgroup size? It’s five. That’s in terms of my notation here. That’s what I have denoted as M. So in this particular case, M equals five. And then I would go to the process again at noon. I would actually also collect five random samples and then I would proceed to do that at 4PM and 8PM – every four hours during a period of eight days. So this is a data. This is all we really need.

So, how do you know which control chart to use? Well, I would like to actually use the assistant menu here. Just to showing something here really quickly. If you go to assistant choose control charts. I want to show you the following flowchart just to make a decision on which control chart we need to use. So the first question you need to answer is: what type of data you’re collecting. Is it continuous or is it attribute? In this particular case, the L value is a continuous number; so we’re going to go to continuous. Was the data collected in subgroups? The answer is yes. Was the subgroup size eight or less? Yes, it was five. So therefore, we’re going to be using the X-bar R Chart. And if you’re wondering why eight or less; why more than eight – where are these rules coming from? Well, the AIAG – Automotive Industry Action Group – has an SPC – Statistical Process Control – manual that actually establishes all those rules. So we’re closely just following the same rules of thumb here.

So let’s go ahead and create an X-bar Chart. But not from here. Let’s go to the Classic Minitab Menu, not the Assistant. Later on, we’re going to come back and use the assistant. For now, let’s use the Classic Minitab Menus. So let’s go into Stat Control Charts. These are variables charts for subgroups. And let’s go ahead and select the X-bar and R. So it’s the Stat Menu. Control Charts. Variable Charts for Subgroups, not for individuals. And choose the X-bar R.

So here, all the observations for the chart are actually in one column. All the observations are indeed in column C1. So just click on that field underneath the drop-down menu. So just click on here, and you should be able to select readings. Then the second input that’s required here is subgroup sizes. So there’s two options. You can either put a number five; because we know the subgroup size is five. Or we can also tell Minitab to figure out what the subgroup size is by just looking at this – the second column. Using a column like this to track the subgroup size gives us the flexibility to have unequal subgroups sizes. Sometimes it may not be feasible to get five parts all the time. So you would need a second column to keep track of that. So in this particular case the subgroup size was exactly five. So it doesn’t matter if you put a number five here, or you choice the date/time. The result will be exactly the same.

Now, remember Minitabs dialogue box has the minimum requirements to run this command. If you click okay, that would generate a control chart. However, I want to customize something about the control chart. I want to make sure that the X-axis has a timestamp. I want to make sure it actually tells me what day of the week, what time of the day the information was collected. So go into Scale, click on the Scale button, choose the Stamp Radio button, click on this field underneath Stamp Columns, and select the date/time column C2. Let’s go ahead and click okay.

There’s two control charts. What is the X-bar R Chart? Well, we got a control chart for the ranges. For each subgroup, I’m going to have a range. And for each subgroup I’m also going to be tracking a subgroup mean. So this is the X-bar Chart. This is the Range Chart. And you can see that the information about the day/time was actually stamped on the X-axis just like we requested. Why do we have two control charts? Well, we use two control charts because they do different things. The graph at the bottom monitors the variation of the process – the ranges. The purpose of the R Chart is to monitor the variation of the process. That means Sigma. What about the one above? Well, this one, on the other hand, tracks or monitors the stability of the average of your process.

So, typically, we go to the Range Chart first. We look at that one. And we ask ourselves the question: Is the variation in statistical control? Well, all the points are actually contained within the control limits. So our conclusion is: the variation is steady over a long period of time. Is the variation changing? Well, I mean the estimates are changing. But there is no evidence to suggest that Sigma has changed over the eight day period in which we collected data.

So the variation seems to be steady – seems to be stable – over time. Then we move up and look at the means. And what do we see there? Well, we see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven points out of company subgroups? Well, we collected samples every four hours during eight days. It’s like forty-eight subgroups. So, is that just a fluke? To see seven points out of control from forty-eight? Can that just be a fluke? No. There is something systematically happening in the process that’s making your process go out of control. And then here’s where you need to do some investigation.

Well, what is causing the process to go out of control? Is it raw materials? Is my operator changing the parameters of the machine? What’s going on? We need to do some investigation and figure out what is causing these processes – these means – to go outside the control limits. If we find the actual root cause, we can prevent it from happening again. Take corrective actions. And that’s really what Shewhart referred to as common cause in special cause variation. And this something that we’ve been talking about this week. We tend to react to changes from just sample to sample. Like here, for instance, we see the range is 2.5. And then the second subgroup, the range was about 1.8. We tend to overreact to those small changes.

Variation is natural. Variation is something that we have to deal with no matter. Things will have a common cause variation that will make things fluctuate. But hopefully it’s only common cause. And every now and then, there will be a signable causes. Things that actually make your process go outside of control. And Shewhart referred to those as special cause variation. So, really bad quality of a new batch of raw material could be special cause of variation. Your operator actually changing the machine parameters is another special cause of variation. There’s a lot of different things that could actually occur. Maybe all of these can be assigned to one of the ships. I actually seen control charts where all the points that were out of control belonged to ship number three. And when we did some further investigation, we concluded that well, we didn’t have supervisors in the night shift. So something else was going on.

Okay, very good. Are there any questions up to this point?

Student Question: So you can’t brush the data sets?

Eduardo: This one you can’t. You remember Minitab allows you to brush points when the point represents an individual row. Here, what is this representing? This first point. It’s representing five rows. So you can’t really brush. That’s why. But if were actually doing an individual’s graph, like an IMR, we will be able to brush. But not for this one.

Let’s actually move on here. Let’s go to page 3-15.

So, we’re basically done here. We concluded that the variation of the process is stable and under statistical control. However, the mean is not. We need to do further investigation and fix those issues. Because this, as Robert said, it’s not just a fluke. It’s not a fluke. Something systematically is systematically occurring in the process that’s causing the mean to vary way more than expected. So this – the mean of the process – is not under statistical control.

So let’s go to page 3-15.

A process that is out of statistical control exhibits unusual variation, which may be due to special causes. Because several points are out of control on this chart, you should investigate what special causes may be affecting the mean color. Now, on the right hand side – under additional consideration -, I want you to focus on the third bullet. It says, ‘assuming normality’ – if the data really follow a normal distribution-; if the mean is not changing you would expect the process to say within the control limits with the probability of 99.73%. So that means that there’s a probability of having a false alarm of .27%.

What is a false alarm? It’s a point that is actually outside of the control limits when, in fact, the mean has not changed. Now, that’s going to be a rare event. It’s only going to happen about .27% of the time. So that’s why I was asking the question: Would seven out of forty-eight subgroups seem like a fluke? No. It seems like something is really going on. Now, if you actually had one thousand subgroups and you see about three points be outside of the control limits. What’s three out of one thousand? It’s about .27% roughly.

And then the fourth bullet here says, ‘the data do not need to follow up the normal distribution for you to use the X-bar Chart’. Even if the data are not normally distributed, the probability of a false alarm is low. So that’s really one of the advantages. So just remember Shewhart noticed that a lot of real data sets do not follow a normal distribution. So when you suspect that that’s the fact for your process, it’s important that you try to do your best to actually get as many samples as you can – as many subgroups.

Are there any questions?

Student Question: Can your subgroup size be too large?

Eduardo: No. It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of resourced probably. Like using forty or fifty every single time you go do your process. It might be too many. But is that negatively affecting the performance of these control charts? It doesn’t. It’s just probably not necessary. Just think about how many samples should be good enough to really estimate Sigma. Twenty; thirty; forty – I mean, ideally. Do you need to go way beyond forty? You don’t. But can you get away with only five? And the answer is yes, you can also get away with five.

Student Question: How do we choose control limits?

Eduardo: The control limits are automatically computed based on the data. So, for instance, just to keep it simple, this one here. This is the average of all these subgroups means. X-double bars. The average of all the subgroups means. Forty. The control limits are populated in such a way that the probability of the data staying within those control limits is 99.73%. So, mathematically, those control limits will be X-double bar plus or minus three times some measurement for Sigma.

Student Question: Is there a reason somebody would say means can be higher probability than 99.73 (Unclear 25:40.1) control limit?

Eduardo: Typically, that’s not the case. I mean .27% – three out of every one thousand subgroups – being false alarms; that’s pretty low.

Student Response: Right.

Eduardo: That’s pretty low.

Student Question: Is there any special consideration for processes that are like low volume, long leap time or complex, where this seems like?

Eduardo: A stable process. That you’re doing, sort of, mass production. And then that’s right. And that’s why I was actually bringing up the comment earlier today about think about how manufacturing was in the twenties and the thirties. It was mass production. So if these guys at Western Electric Company were producing phones, there were probably only two types of phones. White phones and black phones. And that was it. Right? Ford truly believed that everyone just needed a black car. It didn’t think that color was important. So it was just mass-produced. So, you’re right. These techniques assume that the product will be produced on a long term basis. Like you’re not doing it in short batches – in small batches – and then changing to a different product, and then changing to something else. Right? You need really a lot of data. And this is just something that you want to monitor from this point on. And see if your process has remained the same. Is my variation the same? Is my mean the same?

Now, there are special topics on control charts. And I’ll only briefly mention this. I won’t get into details. But there is something called Short Run SPC. And if you’re really interested in that topic. Like say, you’re manufacturing screws. And you got the quarter inch, a one inch, a half inch, and so on and so forth. The process is almost the same, but what you’re measuring is different. It’s actually different because the specification is changing. The target is changing. The nominal value is changing. So if you produce screws of different dimensions in small batches, but it’s still the same family of products, you can group together information. And that’s what we call a Short Run SPC. So even though we’re not producing the same product for a long period of time, we can get information together using a control chart known as ZMR. If you are really interested in this topic, just send me an e-mail and we can follow up on this.

Okay. So before we move on to the second example, I want to talk about something that’s not in the book. It’s not explicitly described in the book. But Shewhart referred to something called phase one and phase two for control charts. So, he though that ever single process should be monitored in two different stages – in two different phases. Phase one is a learning phase.

So what do you do in that phase? Well, you’re collecting data from the process. And with the purpose of doing what? The purpose of understanding what is the true variation of your process and what is the mean of your process. So as you collect more, and more, and more data, you gather information about Sigma and MU. And there are different rules of thumb. You’re supposed to collect about twenty-five subgroups with at least a hundred observations total. So if maybe there’s twenty-five subgroups of size four, that’s actually enough. Or if you actually collect thirty subgroups of size five, that’s more than plenty. Now, if you collect such number of samples and there is nothing out of control, you can calculate what the true estimate. Well, you’re going to accurately estimate what the true value of Sigma and the true value of the mean may be. And that’s phase one. Phase one is a learning phase. The purpose is just basically collect data from the process when it’s in control. There should be nothing going out of control. And that should allow you to estimate MU and Sigma.

Now, notice what happens as I start collecting new information. Look at this. So allow me to go into the data set. You don’t have to do anything. Just watch me do this here. I’m going to remove this data set. I’m going to remove this chunk of the data set – the last three subgroups. So if I go back to the control chart, it says what? It says that the data has changed and it’s not longer reflecting the data set. I’m going to update this graph right now, and just look at this control limits. What happened to them? They changed, but just slightly, right? They change. Well, in phase one, as you collect one more subgroup, and another subgroup, and another subgroup, the control limits will continuously be getting updated. But it reaches a point where enough samples have been collected. You know what MU and Sigma should be. And in that point you move on to the second phase. In the second phase what you is you fix the control limits and you don’t let them change based on the data. That’s phase two.

So what is the purpose of phase one? How would you put it in your own words? What’s the purpose of the first phase?

Student Response: Understand the capabilities of the process.

Eduardo: Not the capabilities. Because that usually involves like the specs. I know what you mean. So, understanding the parameters of the process. Its mean and its standard deviation. Once you gather data to actually know, and “you never really know”; but once you collect enough data, you have a pretty good idea. You can well, this is what MU is. This is what Sigma is. Let’s use those to fix the control limits and continue to monitor the process for this point on.

So if the process changed – if the mean changes – what’s going to happen?

Student Response: The graph will shift up or down.

Eduardo: Perfect. Allow me to actually create a picture that graphically depicts what you just said.

So this is where we think the process should be. So the assumption is that the process is, right now, here. We’ve estimated Sigma and MU from the data in phase one, and this is what MU-zero is, and has some standard deviation. But suppose that something has happened in the process. Something has truly happened in the process that has made this distribution actually shift to the right. So the mean is no longer MU-zero. Now it’s MU-one. What do you think is going to happen? Exactly what John said. It’s going to be now not just a little likely. It’s going to be a lot more likely to see points above the control limit. And that’s something we need to investigate. What actually produced this shift? So that’s what we do in phase two.

Phase one we learn about the process parameters. We fix the control limits. And we move on to phase two, where we just continue to monitor the process. If something changes, we should be able to identify it.

Student Question: What if the shift is not dramatic? Like it happens gently over time and you need to know where that shift started.

Eduardo: Very good question. So the question – if I clearly understand. A large shift can easily be identified with these control charts. And that is very true. So what do you when the shift is very gradual? It’s slowly moving. So, control charts may be a little too slow to react and identify that. But if you go to page 3-15, we actually talk about that concept.

The first bullet says, control charts for subgroup data are sensitive to “large process changes”. If you want to detect small change in the mean, use other charge such as QSum or EWMA – Exponentially Weighted Moving Average -. So there are other control charts that are specifically designed for detecting smaller shifts. Now, if you don’t want to use QSum or EWMA because you’re not comfortable with the interpretation, you still want to stick to these typical classic control charts, there’s one way we can actually detect even smaller shifts. We could increase the sensitivity, or the power of the test, by adding other tests for special causes. The only test for special causes we have actually discussed at this point is if the point is outside of the control limits, there might be a special cause. There are seven additional tests that you can include in order to increase the sensitivity and make it more likely for you to detect those smaller shifts.

Student Question: Did you say you have to get your process in control before you can go on to phase two? Is that correct?

Eduardo: Yes. That is correct. The assumption is, like, you’re trying to estimate the mean and the standard deviation. If during phase one there are things happening to your process, are you really getting the trust estimate of MU and Sigma? You’re not. So that’s why you have to make sure that the process is stable during that process – during phase one. If it’s not stable, you got to continuously fix the process, fix the process, and eliminate as much as you can those special causes of variation.

Student Question: Is there, kind of, a general rule for how much change you see in your control limits, but you can say that my process is stable? You’re saying during phase one you’re looking for it to move. And as you take more measurements, it should stop moving to a point where you feel that’s it, now we understand.

Eduardo: That’s hard to say, because it’s always going to relative to the magnitude – the scale – of whatever you’re measuring. So that will be difficult for me to say, oh, if you see a change of ten percent, or five units; it really depends. Now, once you start gathering more data, you’re going to see that even if I continue to add more, and more, and more data, these control limits will not change. Where you see a lot of change is in the beginning. When you only have like five subgroups. You collect the sixth one. Yeah, they can dramatically change. Because you haven’t collected enough information about the process. But once you gather twenty or more subgroups, you should start to converge.

Student Response: Okay.

Eduardo: If at that point you see something completely different, something’s wrong.

Okay. So let’s go to page 3-16. This is example number two. It’s a continuation of the same process – color consistency. But specifying historical parameters. The X-bar chart revealed that the process is out of statistical control. Rather than rely on the more recent sample data to estimate the parameters for the control chart centerline and control limits, you sample data, record it when the process was in statistical control. Specify a process mean of forty and a standard deviation of .96. Then use the X-bar in our charts to assess the control status of the process.

So, let’s open the data set Color Number Two. Color -> Color Number Two.

Okay. So this is just additional information about the same process. Now, what it’s actually saying is: we know that the X-bar chart was out of control. So instead of actually trying to estimate what MU and Sigma should be based on that data set, why don’t we use historical data from a point in time in the past where we did not observe any anomalies? So the parameters based on that process data was a mean of forty and a standard deviation of .96.

So, let’s create an X-bar R assuming that we are in phase number two. So when you assume. When you fix the control limits, you’re assuming that you’re in that second stage – that second phase. So let’s assign the readings here as all observations for our chart are in one column. The subgroup sizes – you can use a number five, or the day/time column. Now, where do you go to specify the parameter of the process? You go under options. You click on this button, and X-bar and R options. And here, for the historical mean, we’re going to be using the value of forty. And for the standard deviation we’re going to be using the value of .96. Once you’re ready, go to tests.

Now, allow me to focus this for just a second. So remember, if you want to increase the sensitivity of your control chart to identify smaller shifts in the process, you got to include additional tests. That are a total of eights tests here. And the only one – the default – is just outside of the control limits. That’s the easiest one. Now, there are others. Usually, the most commonly used are test number one, two, and seven. So let’s see what some of these rules actually do.

So let’s focus on test number two. Let’s see if we can figure out what test number two does. It says, ‘K points in a row on the same side of the centerline, where K is 9′. So that means that test number two raises a flag when nine points in a row are on the same side of the centerline. You think that that’s very likely? If the process has not changed, do you think it’s very common to see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine on the same side? No. It probably means that what has happened? That a shift has occurred towards that side. So that’s a very common test used to detect even smaller shifts.

Now here, for instance, this is another one. This for a trend. So, ‘K points’. So there’s degradation or some increasing trend. If there’s six points in a row all increasing, or all decreasing, that’s usually another indication that there’s something going on in the process. There has been a systematic change. And there are others that basically say, well, two out of three points outside or beyond two standard deviations from the centerline. Four out of five points outside one standard deviation from the centerline. Or here, this one. Fifteen points in a row within one standard deviation of centerline. What does that mean? Well, all of a sudden you’re supposed to see variation all across the board. If for some reason you just see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen very close to the centerline, something’s going on. Usually it’s the operator. When that happens, it’s very common that maybe the data is being modified by the operators. It could also be that something actually affected the variation and made the variation smaller, which would be great news. Because why would actually the process go from exhibiting larger variation in the means to just basically have smaller variation? So it’s actually a positive change in the process.

Okay. Now, you can choose to perform all tests for special causes. You can choose it from the drop-down menu. You can tell Minitab I want to perform all eight tests for special causes. But that has a disadvantage. What happens when you actually select all these tests is that you’re also negatively affecting the false alarm rate. So remember that for test number one, the false alarm rate was .27%. Now, if you use eight tests, you’re increasing the sensitivity, but you’re also increasing the number of false alarms. And you’re supposed to do investigation. You’re supposed to maybe even stop the process and try to figure out what’s going on. So if you want to use all eight tests, you have to be willing to accept also a higher false alarm rate.

Now, what is a false alarm if you go from one test to eight? There’s a famous paper by this professor in Virgina Tech. His name is William Wardell, or Bill Wardell. He actually has a paper that explains what the false alarm rates go up to when you use multiple tests simultaneously. We – Minitab – has done a lot of research for the assistant menu, and we actually figure out that to get a good protection – good detecting capability – without dramatically increasing the false alarm rate, for phase one you use being using test one, two, and seven. And for phase two it’s just test one and two. And those are the rules that are implicitly assumed by the assistant menu when you use our control charts.

So let’s go ahead and click okay here. I’m going to assume I want to run all eight tests. So let’s go ahead and click okay.

Student Question: You said phase one was one, two and seven? And phase two was?

Eduardo: One and two. Just one and two. You drop out seven.

Student Question: Did you ever change the numbers (Unclear 45:17.5)?

Eduardo: You could. If you understand what the rule’s really trying to identify and you know that something in your process might be very likely to occur. Well, you want to actually increase the sensitivity to that particular case by maybe either reducing or increasing K. Depending on what the test is.

Student Question: Do you ever change the numbers within the tests in the Minitab software?

Eduardo: Yes. But you can change it. You can definitely change it.

So, as we said, we typically look at Sigma. Is the standard deviation still .96? No. Probably not. Why? Because there’s four points out of control. That means a standard deviation of the process has changed. Is the mean the same? No. So, those historical parameters that we used have changed – are not the same anymore. And actually look at this; just to illustrate what I was saying earlier, I’m going to go here – all the way to the bottom – and just assume. Well, ten; twenty. Here you don’t have to do anything. And this is just for illustration purposes. I’m going to create, here, just a little more data. But I’m going to, basically, make it a very extreme subgroup here. So you would that the control chart would be able to detect that without affecting the control limit.

So why will the control limits not be affected? Because I’m using historical parameters. Yes, and it did actually pick it up. [Just undo here].

Okay. Let’s work on just a little exercise. This is on page 3-20. This is Exercise F – Stability of Photographic Film Density Measurements.

So go ahead and work on it individually. I’ll give you a couple of minutes. It’s just basically going over the process of fixing parameters. This is Film Density. We got data for three different control charts.

Do we have rational subgroups here? Yes. I don’t know if you noticed, but you can actually enter more than one variable at a time. And this will just actually produce all three control charts at the same time. So you don’t have to go back and change the variable name. Then under X-bar R options, the means, right? We do have a target for each one of these. So they should be 1.53 and 4.5.

Now, you might be asking yourself the question: How will Minitab know the correspondence? Well, it does it by association. Just like everything else. All the other dialog boxes where we have specified some values. It’s always by association. So the first mean will be actually for the first column that you enter. Second one for the second column. So on and so forth.

Let’s go ahead and click okay. And we can only fix the mean; and not fix the standard deviation. We can do that. So Film Density at one hundred and fifty in statistical control? Yes. Is the standard deviation stable over time? Yes. What about the mean? Same. It is stable over time. What about three hundred? Same story. Both parameters – mean and standard deviation – are stable over time. However, that’s not the case for four hundred and fifty. And the purpose of a control chart is to prevent from this situation from happening. If only we could’ve actually identified the problem right here. We could’ve, in theory, prevented the process from actually deteriorating furthermore.

Remember when we talked about the coding thing in this example with adjust versus no-adjust on Monday. So remember that second process with the no-adjustment. It was a very, very similar situation. And I said control charts are the tools that we use to monitor the process and prevent situations like this from happening. Would one point be out of control? Yes. But if we detect what’s going on – the special cause of variation -, we could’ve actually prevented what happened afterwards.

Okay. Are there any questions about control charts?

So let’s just quickly go over the concepts that we covered here. I’m going to go here to your right side. So, common cause versus special cause. So, variation is a natural thing. Variation will occur. And there are common causes for variation. Right? Different batches of raw material. Maybe even different suppliers, but the suppliers are similar in performance. Maybe the ambient conditions may differ from day to day. Some days might be a little more humid than others. So on and so forth. But that’s what we call common cause variation. Now, every now and then, there will be special causes that will produce changes that are not what you would expect. And that’s what we call special cause of variation. So the purpose of a control chart is to assess whether or not the process is stable in statistical control. And when it’s not in statistical control, the purpose is identifying where special causes may exist.

Now, the idea of national subgroups. Why are rational subgroups recommended? Because they protect you against data that is not normally distributed. If the data is not normally distributed and you can’t do subgroups, you might be in trouble. The control charts work assuming the data behaves like a normal distribution. So if that’s not the case, your control chart for non-normal data may not be accurate.

So, phase one and phase two is basically just the two stages. First we actually collect data from the process. Once you collect enough data from the process under stability, you can estimate the parameters – MU and Sigma -, fix the control limits, and continue to monitor the process under phase two.

We talked. Heidi was asking the question. How do you increase the sensitivity of a control chart for small shifts? You use more tests. You use some of the additional tests.

Stages. That’s the new topic.

Let’s go to the following example.

This is on page 3-22. Shrinkage in an Injection Molding Process. Parts that are manufacturing an injection molding process are shrinking excessively. The average shrinkage of five percent is unacceptable, and the process has too much variability. A quality improvement team uses a design experiment to investigate factors that may affect shrinkage in the injection molding process. Based on the results of the experiment, they reduce the mold temperature. After lowering the temperature, the team decides to further reduce shrinkage by modifying the injection molding tool, which is something expensive.

Data collection. The team collects shrinkage data in subgroups of size ten every eight hours. They labeled the initial data benchmark. The data after the first process changed – reduced temperature, and the data after the second process changed – molding tool modification.

Please go ahead and open Improve.mpg.

So, initially, we noticed that there was too much variation in the process. So we decided to run an experiment. And from that experiment, we concluded that reducing the temperature might actually reduce the variation in the shrinkage of parts. Then after that, there was another change to the process, where we used a new molding tool. So, very good.

Now, here, for injection molding processes, you essentially have multiple cavity; so it’s easy to get multiple parts. It’s fairly easy. So, here, don’t be surprised. Why ten? Because it was just there was a lot of data available. So it was something feasible. Okay.

So, this, using the criteria that we saw before for control charts; if you use more than ten observations per subgroup, you should be using the X-bar S. That’s the recommendation. So, let’s go into Stat –> Control Charts –> Variables Charts for Subgroups, and choose the X-bar S. Let’s just choose shrinkage here, and put date as a stamp for the subgroup size. You can also put the number ten. Go ahead and click okay, and answer the question. Is the process stable?

Student Response: (Unclear 58:33.5).

Eduardo: Are you sure?

Student Question: Which process?

Eduardo: Which process. Yeah, that’s the right question to answer to my question. What process? Why did you say that?

Student Response: Because we dealt with three major changes to the process.

Eduardo: Control charts are supposed to monitor stability. By definition, what is stability?

Student Response: Lack of change.

Eduardo: Lack of change. Everything remaining the same. If you consciously change the process, the process is no longer the same. So it’s really not fair to compare the process as if there were no changes. This is a concept that Minitab calls Stages. So you can force Minitab to calculate independent control limits for each unique stage, and then assess if there was stability within each part – within each process.

So let’s see how that is done. Let’s do Control+E. So there’s a couple of ways you can do that. This is probably the easiest way. Just keeping track of the stage on a third column in the worksheet – which we already did that. So, go into Options. If you click on stages, define stages with this variable, choose change, and leave the defaults where we define a new stage with a new value in the column change. So there should only be three stages. Go ahead and click okay, and okay. What do you say? Is the process stable and in statistical control? Yes it is.

So, this is where I was expecting a wow. You guys didn’t remember to say it.

So it’s a very simple tool, right? That even without someone understanding statistics, it’s clear what happened. We were, right here, at 5.25% on average. The goal was to be below five percent. So in order to reduce the variation, which was very large in the beginning, we reduce the temperature. What did that do to the variation?

Student Response: Reduced it.

Eduardo: Reduced it. What happened to shrinkage levels. They were reduced as well under five percent. Then further down the road, we actually modified the molding tool. What did that actually do to variation? Well, not much. I wouldn’t say it actually reduced it. Maybe not significantly. But on the other hand, it actually had a positive effect on shrinkage, which it kept on reducing it. This is a very graphical tool, and probably one of the best tools in Six Sigma to show a before and after effect. If you want to show management what your project has done to a process to improve it, you got to show how the process was before the change and then after the change.

Student Question: Upper and lower control limits are different. Aren’t overlapping for each one of these things. Did you say the mean is changed (Unclear 1:01:57.4), or you have to go back and run an ANOVA?

Eduardo: That would be an ANOVA formally, yeah. And it’s probably going to be the case, I think, if the control limits are non-overlapping. It also depends on the sample size. It’s tricky. I think, here, we’ve gathered enough data where a One-way ANOVA would basically say the means are different. But you’re right. That’s the right analysis.

Any other questions? So, with this, I think we covered the basics for Control Charting. So this is going to be the end of this little section. We’re going to have a ten minute break. Are there any other questions?

Eduardo: Well, thank you so much, and thanks Mike.

Watch the full video at:
http://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/statistical-analysis/understanding-spc/

The complete Final Tollgate is available for purchase on the iSixSigma Marketplace.