Using Binary Logistic Regression Helped a Global Financial Company Win More Business 

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Let’s look at the financial division of a global conglomerate. One of its businesses was providing loans to corporate clients. Although a dominant player in the market, the company still had to compete with other organizations to provide financing and lending to myriad businesses. By using binary logistic regression to help refine its lending offers, […]

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Control Charts and Employee Engagement Helped This Company Save Over $150,000 in One Year 

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Providing the proper organizational environment for engaging people in your continuous improvement effort will provide large benefits for your organization. In this study, we look at how the combination of using control charts and providing an environment for people engagement helped one company achieve significant financial benefits. Control charts are a powerful tool for understanding […]

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Verifying Their Data With Measurement System Analysis (MSA) Saved This Company $1M

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Most businesses today brag about how they make data driven decisions on important company issues. But, what if the data is not accurate or reflective of what is really going on in the company? You might be making the wrong business decisions and inadvertently costing your company lots of money. Let’s see how one company […]

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How Root Cause Analysis (and Employee Engagement) Can Save Lives and Prevent Injuries

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A company producing commercial ink products noticed that injury rates during one step in their manufacturing process were rising after the introduction of a new product. A Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt (MBB) consultant was hired to help the company try to resolve this serious problem. Was there a simple solution, or would it […]

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Using SIPOC-(R) to Assess Team Culture Leads to Meaningful Dialogue About Communication

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Culture is the “white whale” of leadership: in Moby Dick, Captain Ahab was obsessed with capturing the white whale, and modern leaders have a similar obsession with developing organizational culture.  Lean Six Sigma organizations task themselves with fostering a culture of continuous improvement (or kaizen) that draws from customer requirements, objective data and metrics, and […]

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The F test: An Essential Tool for Data Analysis and Hypothesis Testing

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In many cases, you want to compare the means of samples. But, comparing variances can be just as important. The F test is the statistical tool you would use for that.  

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6S

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6S is the formal activity of organizing the workplace and serves as the foundation of any continuous improvement effort. Explore the 6S and learn how to implement them in your organization.

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Process Time

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Process time is the time it takes for one or more inputs to be transformed into a finished product or service by a business process.

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Tips for Efficient Process Mapping

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A process map is a hierarchical method for displaying processes that illustrates how a product or transaction is processed. It is a visual representation of the workflow either within a process — or an image of the whole operation. Process mapping comprises a stream of activities that transforms a well-defined input or set of inputs into a pre-defined set of outputs.

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The Role of Multi-Generational Product Planning in Business Growth

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“So much to do, and so little time to do it” might be a good way to describe multi-generational product planning, or MGPP. Sometimes it makes sense to stage your improvements over a longer period of time.

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Solving Complex Problems with TRIZ: Principles and Tools for Success

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TRIZ (pronounced “TREEZ”, the Russian acronym for the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) is an established science, methodology, tools and knowledge- and model-based technology for stimulating and generating innovative ideas and solutions for problem-solving. It is short for Teoriya Resheniya Izobreatatelskikh Zadatch.

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Scrum: A Rugby Move Turned Game-Changer in Process Improvement

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The word scrum (short for scrummage) is usually used in the context of rugby. But how would it be used when talking about process improvement? Let’s find out. In rugby, a scrum is a method of restarting play after the ball goes out of bounds or there is a penalty. It involves players packing closely […]

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The Role of a Scrum Master in Facilitating Collaboration and Productivity

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You will commonly hear the word scrum used when you are watching a rugby match. But it is also used in the context of an agile project management framework that helps teams structure and manage their work through a set of values, principles, and practices. A Scrum Master is a role in the Scrum framework, […]

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Z Shift

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The letter Z is not just the sign of Zorro or a segment on “Sesame Street.” It also has a number of statistical connotations. Let’s explore those and more.

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Z bench

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Z bench is not where Zorro rested after saving another town. There are a number of Six Sigma terms associated with the letter Z, such as Z score, Z bench long term, Z bench short term, and Z shift. Let’s explore the A to Zs about Z.

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Using Voice of the Process to Identify Critical Processes for Improvement

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Are you hearing voices? If it’s in a business context, then there is nothing to worry about — and it might even be a good thing. Let’s listen in to the voice of the process and hear what it has to say.

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Yellow Belt (YB)

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Have you seen the Lean Six Sigma rainbow of Belt colors? There is White, Yellow, Green, and Black. Let’s explore Yellow.

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Z-Score: A Handy Tool for Detecting Outliers in Data

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Some say that Z is the sign of Zorro (Spanish for fox), the fictional sword wielding masked vigilante who defended and helped the poor. In statistics, it is something different. In statistics, z usually refers to the standardized score or z-score of a data point in a normal distribution. The z-score measures the number of […]

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X-Bar and R Charts

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Is the variation in your process data to be expected, or has something special occurred? A control chart will give you the answer. The X-bar and R chart will give you the details.

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How to Spot and Eliminate Waste in Your Business Processes

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Waste is all around us. Reducing waste in your process will free up resources and make your process more efficient, save money, increase capacity, and a whole host of other benefits.

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Zero Defects

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Can your organization really achieve zero defects in everything it does? Probably not, but it is a worthy goal to shoot for. Let’s learn more about the concept and how it might help your organization do better.

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Practical Tips for Obtaining Unbiased Estimates in Sampling

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It’s not practical to measure every value in a population, whether it be people or all the jars of peanut butter you produced. Taking samples helps. But if your samples are biased and don’t represent the population, then you have a biased statistic or estimator. Let’s learn how you can calculate an unbiased statistic.

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How to Use Voice of the Customer to Improve Customer Experience

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While an organization may hear many voices (Customer, Business, Employee and Process), it is the voice of the customer (VOC) that is the driving voice as to what should be important to the organization and what the organization should focus on. The satisfaction of the VOC needs to be balanced against the Voice of the […]

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Enhancing Quality through Value-Added Work: Meeting Customer Requirements

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Being busy and working hard don’t necessarily mean what you are doing will have value to your customer. Let’s see why not.

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