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A box plot may seem like a simple tool, but as this example shows it can help reveal common and special cause variation that may not have otherwise been noticed. Be sure you’re looking below the surface to optimize your performance!

Depending upon the particular organization, quality may or may not be influential in management decision-making. Ultimately, it depends upon what is understood as quality. There may be more urgent tactical actions than those related to quality if the organization’s product or service quality is acceptable – it may not be perfect, but if it’s acceptable then that’s good enough.

Construction projects are always a challenge. Inspections are needed (often several), but if you’re trying to schedule one in Brevard County, Florida, you’re competing for the attention of 14 inspectors in a 500 square mile environment. Lean Six Sigma to the rescue!

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.

Your organization may have any number of possible areas for improvement. How do you pick which project to start with? The value index can help you prioritize by measuring optimization between performance, quality and cost.

In the midst of a financial crisis, a California County had to contend with its aging fleet of vehicles. The County’s application of Lean Six Sigma has allowed for an initial $3 million in cost savings with more on the horizon.

DMAIC is a data-driven process-improvement methodology. Let’s look at how DMAIC compares to other problem-solving processes as well as the benefits of using DMAIC when solving a complex problem.

How a company organizes and runs project teams can have as much effect on speed of delivery as the teams themselves. These four ingredients will keep your program focused and efficient.

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 […]

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, […]

By understanding some of the components of Agile, you can learn to incorporate them into DMADV projects and drive positive results.

Looking for good books to read on the topics of quality, Six Sigma, Lean and OpEx? This reading list shares the best quality-topic books of all-time and book recommendations by topic.

It is a time of change. The world is developing faster with each passing day. Continuous process improvement technologies, which could make these changes more significant and effective, trail far behind this trend. Who suffers? Companies that lose competition, people who cannot find a new place in the changed labor market and countries that are […]

iSixSigma.com is pleased to introduce its new Editorial Advisory Board.

Lean Six Sigma Green Belts are part-time improvement professionals who complete Lean Six sigma projects in their area of work experience.

Healthcare is a heavily regulated industry and requires substantial amounts of paperwork. Paperwork may not be as pressing as patient care, but it must be done in a timely fashion. A Lean Six Sigma project reduced the task delinquency rate in its residency program.

A Green Belt project aimed at reducing the cycle time for purchase orders finds the bottleneck and dramatically improves the process, exceeding the project’s original goals, and even realizes bonus benefits.

Using the DMAIC methodology, a Green Belt project aims to reduce the cycle time for purchase orders and straighten up a direction-less process.

SigmaXL Inc., a leading provider of user-friendly Excel Add-ins for Statistical and Graphical analysis, announces the release of SigmaXL Version 8.1.

In order to achieve White Belt certification, 21 students works on eight projects ranging from improving the taste of chocolate chip cookies to increasing tourism in Nauru and having more successful birthday parties.

Why wait until college or later to learn Lean Six Sigma? Twenty-one middle and high school students in Cary, North Carolina, achieved their White Belt certifications in the summer of 2018.

Here’s the story about how the hypothesis testing flow chart was developed in Barcelona in 1995, as told by Mike Carnell.

The City of Fayetteville, North Carolina, faced a staffing crisis in its Finance department. Thanks to a DMAIC project, in just 14 weeks the City was able to turn the department’s chaos around.

There are seven success factors for why Six Sigma is a proven effective business change initiative.

Although many LSS organizations focus their improvement efforts solely on reducing costs, cost savings are chump change when compared to the revenue implications of delivering an enhanced customer experience. Learn how to quantify – and achieve – five categories of financial benefit beyond cost savings.

The best of iSixSigma 2018 features the highlights of this year’s content – those best loved by our readers.

A form is a document that has a set template for the presentation of data or information. Format is the layout with which the data is presented.

Part 2 of this series presents a case study of the redesign of a bracket’s fatigue model. The case study shows how UQ techniques can be used to perform robust risk estimation, identify key drivers of manufacturing variability and gather more information for critical decisions.

Learn to combine Six Sigma with UQ – advanced statistical techniques that, when applied to simulations of complex systems, generate actionable results to reduce process variability.

After more than six months of hard work, iSixSigma is celebrating its relaunch today and I’m excited to announce the brand new, redesigned iSixSigma.com.

If it relies or revolves around the internet, chances are it counts as web-based technology. This concept encompasses a significant vertical and horizontal scope, which means it includes many different kinds of technology, products and services. Overview: What is web-based technology (WBT)? Web-based technology (WBT) is a broad umbrella term that encompasses many different types […]

The probability of a defect when defects are correlated. For example, when linewidths are printed too wide the process can cause thousands of ‘bridging’ defects, so although the number of defects is extremely high, there is only one opportunity. Unless of course there are say four sensitive areas on the circuit so that a slight […]

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.

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.

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.

In business, it is necessary to have a solid understanding of what, exactly, is going into your processes. After all, if you do not know your inputs, how can you expect to be able to keep your output outcome desirable, repeatable, and consistent? Your X’s play a massive role in the outcomes you achieve. In […]

Work cells are a key lean six sigma strategy designed to improve quality, eliminate waste, and enhance the end-user experience.

You may have heard of “white noise” when it comes to signal processing, but this is not the only application for the term. It is also a way to describe data in modeling. When we reference “white noise” in modeling, the “noise” is in reference to there being no set pattern and all variations being […]

A Z value is a data point’s position between the mean and another location as measured by the number of standard deviations. Z is a universal measurement because it can be applied to any unit of measure. Z is a measure of process capability and corresponds to the process sigma value that is reported by […]

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

Tribal knowledge is the information regarding a product or service process that resides only in the minds of the employees. Familiarize yourself with how non-documented tribal knowledge creates inefficiencies within the process, and understand the benefits of addressing these gaps.

Do your processes deliver value for your customer? How do you know if what you do is valued by your customer? Let’s find out.

Gain a better understanding of value stream mapping and how you can use it in your business. We’ll cover the flow, department interactions, bottleneck identification, and key metrics — as well as a few best practices.

Are you ready to dust off your calculus differential equations and Laplace transformations? No? Then we will have to provide a simpler discussion of what a transfer function, or Y=f(X), is all about. 

In a regression model, there will be an amount of variation that is unexplained by x, unless r squared equals 100%. When you are working with a regression model, there is a chance that you will encounter an amount of variation that is unexplained. This variation, nevertheless, needs to be accounted for and checked to […]

A U chart is one of four quality control charts that engineers use to track variation in a manufacturing process. The other three typical quality control charts are the p chart (which plots the proportion of defective items, the c chart (which shows the number of defects), and the np chart (which shows the number […]

When there seem to be more problems than can reasonably be dealt with, which is the right analytical tool to better your chances of spending precious time on those crucial few problems that will have the greatest impact on quality?

Proper WIP management creates both quick wins and long term improvements. Here’s what you need to know.

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.

Visual Quality Document