Toad

I’ve made a similar move myself.  My impression so far is that the technical skills are absolutely transferable.  The big difference to me seems to be the focus on Change Management.  There is much more focus on this in Service, and so you may have some new skills, tools and thinking to bring to manufacturing.

Yes, the S chart is showing the variation within subgroups.  It is easily possible to have a scenario where the variation within subgroups is consistent, but the averages, shown in the x-bar, vary greatly.
 

I wouldn’t use IMR to plot averages.  The control limits needs to vary depending on the size of the subgroup and IMR will assume that the subgroup size is always equal to one.  Your control limits will be too wide and therefore won’t give us a true picture of whether the process is in or out of control.

Franz,
Our GBs do exactly what you describe.  They are trained in DMAIC and can run small project if appropriate, but in our business there is so special cause present that we need to get our processes under control as a priority.  If we don’t do this then our DMAIC projects will be less successful.
I wonder if this is a key difference between m…[Read more]

Thanks for your respond, dude.
If I did choose to use variable control limits, what would be the benefit?