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Box-Cox Transformation

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The Box-Cox transformation can be used for converting the data to a normal distribution, which then allows the process capability to be easily determined.

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Operation Cost Target (OCT)

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An operation cost target is the maximum expenditure allowed for all costs that are associated with a project, including overhead, materials, labor, outsourcing, and other costs.

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How Motorola’s Continuous Improvement Efforts Led to Record Growth and Profit

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While Motorola had been an industry leader for decades, by the 1970s, many of its products were seen as potentially unreliable by consumers. The company addressed this issue by embarking aggressively on an innovative program of continuous improvement that has come to be known as Six Sigma. How Continuous Improvement Changed Consumer Perception Of Motorola […]

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Strategic Planning: Defining Vision, Goals, and Objectives for Success

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Strategic planning is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future.

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Capability Maturity Model (CMM)

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An established framework for the ongoing improvement of software development and implementation practices.

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Convert DPMO/Sigma to Cpk

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DPMO, Sigma Level and Cpk are three metrics you can use to measure how well your process is performing.

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Subject Matter

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Subject matter refers to all things related to your company’s products, services, or customers.

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Mura

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Mura is a Japanese word meaning unevenness, non-uniformity, and irregularity.

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FMEA

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FMEA stands for Failure Mode Effects Analysis and allows you to think through all of the possible ways something can go wrong, then find ways to mitigate those risks, so that your project is more likely to succeed.

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Alias

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An alias indicates that you’ve changed two or more things at the same time in the same way. Aliasing is a synonym for confounding.

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How Process Maturity Models Help Organizations Achieve Higher Levels of Performance

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Process maturity is a concept used by the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodology to evaluate and optimize business processes.

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How to Create and Use a Radar Chart

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A radar chart, also known as a spider chart, is a great tool to graphically compare multiple outcomes for specific characteristics and criteria. 

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How to Use Entitlement to Drive Process Improvement

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Entitlement is defined as the best performance you can reasonably achieve with the existing process.

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The Benefits of Using Flowcharts in Six Sigma Projects

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A flowchart is a diagram of a process, using standard symbols to represent a variety of process activities over a specified timeline.

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Linearity vs. Repeatability: What’s the Difference?

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What Is Linearity? Before we can understand linearity, we must understand another measurement error known as bias. Bias is a consistent mistake that occurs in measurement. For example, every measure taken with your scale comes out heavier than the actual weight. Linearity measures the consistency of a bias over the entire range of possible measurements. […]

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Common Cause vs. Special Cause Variation: What’s the Difference?

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What is Common Cause Variation? Common cause variation is the kind of variation that is part of a stable process. These are variations that are natural to a system and are quantifiable and expected. Common cause variations are those that are predictable, ongoing, and consistent. Major changes would typically have to be made in order […]

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How to Incorporate SS Process Reports into Your Quality Processes

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The Six Sigma process report is a Minitab tool that calculates process capability and provides visuals of process performance.

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How to Identify and Eliminate FISH Inventory in Your Business

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First in Still Here (FISH) is a term that refers to very slow-moving inventory.

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Design Verification, Production and Process Validation (DVP&PV)

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The process where planning, testing, and reporting occur in the design or prototype stage in the development of a product.

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Tangible vs. Intangible Benefits: What’s the Difference?

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What Are Tangible Benefits? Tangible benefits are positive results that can be accurately measured and quantified with standard measurements. In business, the term describes any kind of outcome that is directly associated with financial gain or loss. You can always boil down tangible benefits to a monetary value relative to other types of investments or […]

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Null Hypothesis vs. Hypothesis

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Null Hypothesis vs. Hypothesis: What’s the Difference? What Is Null Hypothesis? A null hypothesis is a prediction that there is no statistical relationship between two variables or two sets of data. Essentially, a null hypothesis makes the assumption that any measured differences are the result of randomness and that the two possibilities are the same […]

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What is Return on Net Assets? A Complete Guide

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RONA is one bottom-line measurement showing performance relative to strategic goals and objectives.

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Confirmation is Key to Reducing Risk and Increasing Accuracy

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Confirmation is a way to confirm that a process is working as expected. It can be used to validate or invalidate a hypothesis, test a process or product and test the process of testing.

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GOAL Deployment

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Using GOAL Deployment in support of their Strategic Plan, this company was able to align goals and objectives and achieve impressive organizational improvements  The Company historically used yearly Strategic Planning to lay out its macro goals and initiatives. This was done by each functional area of the company submitting what they believed they wanted to […]

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Discover the Power of Process Window Index in Continuous Improvement

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A process window index (PWI) is a quantifiable and reproducible statistical measure which indicates how a product performs relative to range limits.

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How Ideation Brainstorming Can Improve Your Business Processes

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Ideation brainstorming is the first stage of a formal solution development process that usually includes free-form exchange of thoughts and ideas.

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Accuracy vs. Repeatability: What’s the Difference?

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What Is Accuracy? Accuracy is the difference between a measured value compared to its true value. Since no measurement can be 100% exact, there needs to be a degree of inaccuracy allowed in the measurement. This degree of inaccuracy depends on the amount of error you are able to accept and is denoted by a […]

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Keep It Simple and Specific (KISS)

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The Keep it Simple and Specific principal is based on the idea that most systems work at their best if they are kept simple as opposed to being made complicated.

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Activity Based Costing (ABC): Key to Increasing Efficiency and Improving Profit Margins

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Activity Based Costing (ABC) is a tool to help companies understand how their products and services are being used.

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Subject Matter Expert vs. Consultant: What’s the Difference?

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What is a Subject Matter Expert? Subject matter experts (SMEs) are people who have a significant amount of knowledge or experience regarding a specific subject. They can specialize in any kind of academic discipline, profession or practice. Even though their area of expertise is relatively narrow compared to general consultants, there is still a lot […]

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Visual Management Boards

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Visual Management Boards played a critical role in enabling this company to link and visually display critical metrics, KPIs and actions in a simple and consistent way. Using Visual Management Boards (VMBs), the company was able to consistently create and display critical organizational information  A Visual Management Board (VMB) is used to display critical information […]

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Understanding Systems Thinking: A Guide to the Key Concepts and Benefits

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Systems thinking is based upon the concept that all systems are composed of interconnected parts. These connections and interrelationships cause behavior of one part to impact another.

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Repeatability vs. Precision

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What Is Repeatability? Repeatability is the typical variation that occurs when a person measures a part with the same tool (or gauge) multiple times. This concept relates to the accuracy of any measurement. A measurement is only as accurate as the typical variation that occurs when that item is measured. When conducting a repeatability test, […]

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Entry Criteria: Key to Controlling Processes and Reducing Variability

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Entry criteria is an established set of conditions that must be met before a specific process can begin.

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What is The Poisson Distribution? A Complete Guide

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The Poisson distribution is a discrete probability distribution that provides the probability of a given number of events occurring in a specified interval of time or space.

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Unlocking the Secrets of the S-hat Model

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S-hat is a common model used in statistics when estimating a population.

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Exit Criteria vs. Acceptance Criteria

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What Are Exit Criteria? Exit criteria are conditions that must be met before closing out one project stage and advancing to the next stage. When project management teams use exit criteria, they break down the project into multiple steps. Therefore, each stage will have its own set of conditions (exit criteria) that must be met […]

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Repeatability vs. Reproducibility: What’s the Difference?

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Repeatability and reproducibility are two ways that scientists and engineers measure the precision of their experiments and measuring tools. They are heavily used in chemistry and engineering and are typically reported as standard deviations in scientific write-ups. While these two measurements are both used in many types of experiments, they are quite different and offer […]

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The Role of Inferential Statistics in Data Analysis

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Inferential statistics consists of several statistical tools that will allow you to make an inference about the population from sample data.

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A Guide to Using the Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test

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The Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test, sometimes called the Mann Whitney Wilcoxon Test or Mann Whitney U test, is used to test whether two independent samples come from the same population or two different populations. 

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Capability: Formulas for Measuring Process Performance

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Capability is the ability of your process or product to meet expectations of your customers or any internal organizational expectations, goals or targets.

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How to Use Benchmarking to Drive Performance Improvements

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Benchmarking is comparing what you do to how other organizations do it.

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Value Added vs. Non Value Added

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What is Value Added? The most important thing to understand about value concepts is that they always revolve around the customer. Customers are the ones who set the standard for value, which means it’s based on whether the customer believes the product or service will address their specific needs. Increasing appeal by adding value may […]

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Maintaining Quality Standards with Process Design Requirements

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Businesses should have clear expectations from every procedure, activity and task that happens in their workplace. These expectations can be formalized as process design requirements, which describe the minimum acceptable results from a particular process. Overview: What are process design requirements? Active business managers don’t just let things unfold and develop on their own. Control […]

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Cpk vs. Sigma Level: What’s the Difference?

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What is Cpk? Cpk is short for Capability Index. It is a measurement of the capability of a process to deliver output that is within the specification limits of a process. The Benefits of Cpk With Cpk, you are able to determine how closely a process can meet overall specifications in its ability to produce […]

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The Significance of Measurement Variation in Your Process

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In statistics, variation is a measure of the dispersion or spread of your process data.

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Fishbone Diagrams: A Powerful Tool for Root Cause Analysis

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Fishbone diagrams are used to drill down to the root cause of a problem. The diagram looks like the bones of a fish, where each main bone represents a possible category of root cause, and subsequent drilling down is shown as smaller and smaller bones.

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Understanding Covariates for Accurate Results

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A covariate is a continuous variable that affects a process that is not the direct target of the study. Excluding known covariates from an investigation can lead to skewed or biased results, which can reduce the value of the analysis or even render it worthless for its intended purpose. Accounting for known covariates is crucial […]

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Maximizing Productivity with Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED)

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SMED or Single Minute Exchange of Dies is a process for reducing changeover time.

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Sigma in Statistical Analysis: What You Need to Know

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Sigma is the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet and is used as a common notation in statistics as a measure of summation and variation.

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