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You have compared your process data before and after an improvement. Is the difference real or just noise?  Statistical significance will help you answer that question.

Correlation allows you to determine whether sets of data have some sort of relationship. Goodman-Kruskal Gamma looks at pairs of data and determines a correlation. Let’s see how.

Variation and quality are not compatible with each other. The reality, however, is that anytime measurements are taken, there is going to be variation.

If you have ever taken a test and your results told you that you were in a certain percentile or quartile, you may already have a bit of an understanding of how quartiles and boxplots work. Q3 is an important part of fully understanding boxplots.

The concept of quality assurance began in the manufacturing industry and is now standard for most industries.

You may need to be able to determine if your processes are acceptable and capable. Thankfully, there are capability and performance indicators such as Cp, Pp, Cpk, and Ppk that can help you make that determination.

In your regression model, one thing to look for is multicolinearity. It is a problem and can cause issues when you are interpreting results.

Accountability is everything. It builds trust, reputation and responsibility and is the foundation of every good business practice.

Knowing how your company is doing and where it can improve is vital to the health of your organization. Performance metrics help to accomplish this and one such metric is a balanced scorecard.

In business, things aren’t always what they seem. Companies that want to see what’s really going on conduct audits to get actionable details.

Finding solutions to problems can often be better as a group effort. There are several group methods for addressing an issue. One option is the nominal group technique.

Correlation analysis is central to business operations in a wide range of industries, from statistics and research, to marketing and psychology, to agriculture and physics. Even a basic understanding of the overall principles can be useful for virtually any business, in any industry.

Every company faces risks all the time. Specific threats and priorities may change, but the need for an effective management strategy doesn’t.

Having enough data available for what you want to do is vital for estimates that are as precise as possible. Degree of freedom is a concept that assists in higher forms of statistical analysis.

Business transformation and lean deployment take dedicated resources with a particular set of skills to ensure change and continuous improvement are embedded in an organization. The role of change agents has never been more vital in today’s super competitive business world, and we’ll show you why.

The skill of an artisan can produce unique, beautiful and innovative products, but this type of process is challenging to capitalize on in business.

You’ve heard the saying “everything is a process.” It’s a diplomatic way of saying something is taking too long, is too inconvenient, or that an outcome is out of one’s control. But processes are not carved in stone. They are meant to be continually analyzed, taken apart, cleaned up, enhanced, and optimized. And business leaders who constantly engage with their company’s processes do so because it’s how they are empowered to control every detail, every outcome, every time.

Kanban is a tool used in Lean Manufacturing to visually manage the workflow through your processes. It is based on the concept of a pull system where things are only replaced as they are consumed. 

This consumer products company has a large portfolio of products. Working with key customers, the company develops and promotes brand marketing programs to help the customer improve their sales which increases the company’s revenue as well. The CEO of the company realized the percentage of successful promotions was less than he expected. At the same […]

Often in business, it becomes necessary to make changes to ensure a greater degree of quality. Just because a change is made though, does not necessarily mean an improvement has been made. Change needs to be systematic for quality to improve.

This mathematical value is, of course, the ratio of the circumference of any circle to its diameter and is signified by the symbol π. In manufacturing, however, it can mean something else.

Overview: What Is Big ‘Q’? It is a strategic approach to quality improvement that focuses on the entire business rather than only seeking to improve the product itself. This management method asks every level of management to focus on exceeding customer expectations to produce global changes in how it meets market needs. Conversely, little ‘q’ […]

Six Sigma at many organizations simply means a measure of quality that strives for near perfection. Six Sigma is a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects (driving toward six standard deviations between the mean and the nearest specification limit) in any process — from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service.

Process and measurement variations should be kept to a minimum. When looking at these variations and how they are impacting your work, there is a way to group them together.

It takes a lot of testing and evaluation in order to get software ready for the marketplace. Early on in software development, clearly defined methods were put in place to ensure high-quality products that were bug-free.

You may think turnaround time has decreased from your baseline as a result of a process improvement. But has it really? The t statistic is one way to find the answer to that question.

The word Normal generally has a positive connotation. When applied to statistics, the term Normal Distribution has essentially the same effect. Let’s see why. 

There are several ways that companies conduct inspections of their software. One such method is Fagan Style Software Inspection.

In modern manufacturing, it is likely that once operations reach a certain level of growth, they will be spread out over multiple locations and a standard of quality will be more difficult to maintain.

If you have a project goal, it can be tempting to forge full steam ahead without looking at any potential fallout. This is, of course, a mistake. It is always important to look at what issues might come up on the way towards reaching a project target. When working on the primary metric, other metrics should be kept aware of.

Sometimes, as companies make efforts to limit costs by improving their processes, they incur costs related to an increased level of inspection. This can prove to be even more costly than the initial issues.

If you are going to get something done, it is best to usually have a plan. If there are steps that need to be taken towards reaching a goal, those steps likely need to have a sensible order to them.

You have retrofitted your major production machine to make it run faster. Did the retrofit really improve machine speed? A 2-Sample t-Test can be used to answer that question. 

Complex math is often the best way to make sense of a confusing maze of quantifiable variables and conditional relationships.

When you collect data from your process, the values will vary. This dispersion or variation of data around the central tendency can be measured. Let’s explore the different ways to measure dispersion.  

Randomness and independence are two required characteristics for understanding and analyzing process variation. The Runs Test allows you to check for the randomness of a set of sequentially collected data. 

The word gating is often used in the context of Six Sigma and DMAIC and is usually referred to as tollgate reviews. The purpose is to evaluate your progress, and make sure you’re still heading in the right direction. 

What if you were asked to rate this article on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being you didn’t like it and 5 being you loved it. That’s an example of a Likert Scale.

As the name implies, capability analysis is an analysis of the ability of your process to meet your customer’s expectations and requirements. There are a number of calculated metrics which can be used to help you do your capability analysis. 

ANOVA is a powerful statistical method for comparing several samples (3 or more) to each other to see if the populations that the means came from are statistically different.

In production, some events are hard to predict, but most things can be prepared for with proper planning.

If you ever find yourself, solving the same problems week after week with nary a long-term impact, it could be worth creating a current reality tree to identify the root causes.

The concept of a confidence band is usually associated with regression analysis. We will also explain why a confidence band is not the same as a confidence interval.

When you have multiple factors at different levels, it can be challenging to figure out which is the optimal combination. Design of Experiments is one common method you can use. The Taguchi Method is another.

In the context of marketing, segmentation is the process of dividing a target market into groups with similar needs and behaviors. This allows you to develop unique strategies to meet specific wants and needs. 

With your company, you need to be able to have your customers believe in you, deliver products on-time, and understand your processes as well as how they can be improved. This can all be accomplished with a quality assurance schedule.

Delivering quality and value for your company and your customers is a basic building block of business success and growth. With Total Value Management (TVM) we will show you a system that is straightforward to deploy, delivers real and tangible results, locking in value for you and your customers alike.

Now wait a minute, we already have a Quality Management System and a Quality Manual, I don’t have time for this Total Quality Management fad, right? Think again, this is no fad. With successful deployment and adoption of TQM you can elevate your business to new quality highs and both your customers and employees will reap the benefits.

The definition of non-conformity is provided and then described with examples of what non-conformities involve, giving examples of the process approach to facilitate the management of the non-conformities.

If your manufacturing process produces multiple products or SKUs in short runs, how many control charts will you need to monitor those different products? With short-run SPC, you might only need one.