KWalker

You may also want to look into a Root Cause called TOPS-8D. I believe it was originally developed by Ford, and is also used by GE. I used it as the basis for our process here, and it’s pretty straightforward. One key concept is that after brainstorming, you bound the problem, and try to group ideas so they can be eliminated in bunches, rather than…[Read more]

As others have said, your target should focus on what your customer expects, not an unrelated statistical measure of how it’s doing now. Do you have a quoted turnaround time, or a contractual agreement? Another thing to consider is that it’s very often the variation in your process the customer feels, not the mean or median. It’s the tail, when…[Read more]

Your process tolerance is what your spec allows, in this case 6 in-lb (13-7). Your Gage R&R results will give you two sets of measurements – one related to how well the measurement system can measure differences in your process (%study variation or % contribution in Minitab), and one relating to how good your measurement system is for accepting…[Read more]

I’d suggest using an Excel Pivot table – it’s a great way to both summarize and graph your data. They’re pretty simple to create, and very flexible once you have them. You tell it where your data is, then drag and drop to create. Data can be shown as counts, sums, averages, etc., and cross-referenced between any of your headings. You don’t need…[Read more]

If you’re actually removing hands-on time, then the easiest metric is labor savings, but you can’t realize that as actual $ for the company unless you can cut a head, or put off a hiring. If the hands-on time remains the same, but you’ve simplified to reduce your cycle time, then it may be you can show that fewer process steps lead to fewer…[Read more]