Category: Concepts

An in-depth look at the Lean Six Sigma customer — who they are, why they’re important, and how to win lifelong loyalty.

When doing hypothesis testing, there is a risk of making two types of errors. One of them is the consumer’s risk, which is when the null hypothesis is rejected when it shouldn’t have been. 

If you stretch a rubber band and let it go, it will snap back to its original position. The same is true of your any process improvements you make. The control plan is intended to help you maintain the gains you have achieved. 

Having a continuous approach in your organization can be both positive and negative, depending on what it is in regard to. When it comes to improvement, being continuous is ideal. Striving for continuous improvement in your organization furthers the success of your company. Striving for continuity in other aspects, however, can be detrimental. Overview: What […]

Listening to and engaging with your customer gives a powerful and unique insight into what your products and services should deliver to be successful. By developing a number of Critical to Customer requirements, you can build a strong foundation for customer satisfaction and commercial success.

Would you expect the average of a sample to be the same as the average of the population from which it came? No. Why not? Because of randomness and sampling error. How should we handle that? Let’s find out.

Unfortunately, sometimes your process produces unacceptable output. These are usually referred to as defects or defectives. Let’s examine what a defective item is and contrast it with a defect. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a defective as: having a defect or flaw or imperfect in form, structure, or function. Simply put, a defect is a flaw […]

Competition for products and services is cutthroat, and survival should not be taken for granted. Implementing continuous improvement into your organisation and embedding it into your business culture keeps you one step ahead of the pack, locking in both customer and employee loyalty.

The famed statistician, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, frequently talked about data and said, “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.” Let’s learn some more about data. Data refers to any information, facts, or statistics that can be collected, stored, and analyzed. It can be in the form of numbers, text, images, audio, or […]

Some companies struggle to operate within budget because they do not understand the difference between what is possible in theory and what’s possible given the constraints of their business. Knowing the how, when, and why about setting cost related targets helps gain that understanding and is crucial to knowing what systems are realistically capable of.

If you look at the dashboard of your car, you will see a display of the current real-time status of important metrics. You can do the same thing with your business metrics.

Understanding continuous data will give you an advantage that is critical to successful process analysis. This article will explain the crucial role of continuous data in process improvement.

Cost of poor quality, also known as COPQ, are the direct and indirect costs associated with the defects generated by a process. COPQ impacts the financial bottom line in both the short and long term, so it’s important to address quality errors in a timely manner.

What is performance in the workplace judged upon? What makes an exceptional worker? Being able to boil down the most important features is key to pinpointing the expectations of a worker’s performance. These key features are the critical elements. Overview: What is a critical element? A critical element can be defined as an aspect of […]

When you make improvements to your processes, that is not enough. It is important to put measures in place that ensure that the work that has been done can be sustained.In the DMAIC process, your problem is defined, measurements are taken, analysis occurs, and improvements are made. After all of this, comes the final control […]

Conformance is a term that refers to the degree to which a product, service, or system meets its specified requirements. It is the total of all expenses incurred by a company to meet a target quality level for a product or service.

If you look at the dashboard of your car, you will see information related to the car’s performance and the progress of your journey. When you look at your business dashboard, you can see examples of similar information.  

There are some set characteristics that make something what it is. We look for common characteristics that make a door a door. We look for certain characteristics in order to be able to call a type of vehicle a car. There are set characteristics for most common things that, when looked at together as a […]

Finding the center point of your data set can be deceptively simple. There are a few different methods that you should be aware of when determining the central tendency, which come into play depending on the nature of your data. Determining the center point of your data set can be helpful in a variety of […]

Lean Six Sigma is a process improvement methodology that uses data to identify and solve problems in business processes. One of the main tools used in Lean Six Sigma is the process flow diagram, which is used to map out the steps in a process and identify where waste occurs. The diagram can be used […]

Early on in our educational development, most of us received a simple worksheet that explained cause and effect. The importance of what causes are and the effects that come from them did not end in childhood but is important as an adult too, especially in the business world. Knowing what the causes are for the […]

Does your organization have a centralized department or function that monitors and tracks the performance of your operations relative to your customers? If you do, let’s see what it might be doing. The term “Customer Operations Performance Center” is not a widely recognized or standardized term, so its exact meaning may vary depending on the […]

Good communication is one of the most important qualities to have if you want to succeed in business. For various reasons, this quality is often overlooked. None of us exist in a bubble. All of us find it necessary to communicate with others in our business lives at some point or another. Communicating well is […]

This is what I want! This is what I need! This is how I want it to perform! You need to embark upon a process to take your customers’ qualitative wants and needs and translate them into specific customer requirements.