All Features
Eston Martz
Statisticians say the darnedest things. At least, that’s how it can seem if you’re not well-versed in statistics.
When I began studying statistics, I approached it as a language. I quickly noticed that, compared to other disciplines, statistics has some unique problems with terminology. These are…
Annette Franz
Do you think that the speed of innovation is too fast for your customers? Or just right? Do you know how your customers feel about the pace?
I was reading about the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer the other day and saw this finding: “More than half of the global informed public believe that the pace…
Gorur N. Sridhar
Quality and Six Sigma are often considered as links in a chain. For example, when quality is poor, many times the immediate response is, “Let’s improve it using Six Sigma.” But does Six Sigma, or any other program for that matter, really improve quality? Or, are they simply mirrors to let us know…
Joel Smith
Just 100 years ago, very few statistical tools were available and the field was largely unknown. Since then, there has been an explosion in available tools, as well as ever-increasing awareness and use of statistics.
Although most readers of this column are looking to pick up new tools or improve…
Mark Rosenthal
In his TEDx talk, Josh Kaufman, author of The First 20 Hours (Portfolio, 2013), outlines his theory of learning a new skill. One of his key points is the prevailing belief that you have to spend 10,000 hours practicing a skill to become good at it.
This equates to more than five years of practice…
John Flaig
I have discussed the economics of project management numerous times in presentations all over the country, and based on the response to my message, I have to conclude that many people just don’t get it.
Let me again sound the wake-up call with a quote from V. S. Liebhold, co-author of the article…
Jack Dunigan
Jason is a principal officer in a city office of a large consulting firm. The regional vice president recently met with him to offer a position as a district manager. For two hours or so the regional guy talked about the district, its strengths, its few weaknesses, and offered Jason the job. It…
Randall D’Amico
Story update 8/6/2015: Paragraph 14 of this article stated "many organizations are ill-equipped to develop an effective risk management assessment process," implying, to some, that a risk management system is required, which as stated in paragraph 8 of this article, it is not (nor was that the…
Ryan E. Day
“The experiments we’re undertaking today will lead to an all-new model of transportation and mobility within the next 10 years and beyond.” —Mark Fields, president and CEO, Ford Motor Co.
Mark Fields delivered those somewhat prophetic words at the official grand opening of Ford’s Research and…
TE Connectivity
Connectors and lead wires provide the electrical connection between the coils of an LVDT position sensor and signal conditioning electronics. Choosing between a connector and lead wires, when specifying an LVDT or other sensor, often depends on the application and its environment.
Below are some…
Jeffrey Phillips
In every aspect of life, we create dichotomies to simplify decision making. Something is right or wrong, black or white. We do this to simplify our lives, shorten decision making time, and become more efficient. But creating these simple dichotomies means we often miss excellent opportunities for…
Donald J. Wheeler
Some commonly held ideas about skewed probability models are incorrect. These incorrect ideas are one source of complexity and confusion regarding the analysis of data. By examining the basic properties of skewed distributions this article can help you to greater clarity of thought and may even…
Brian Maskell
For many people the role of a value stream manager isn’t clearly understood. Others incorrectly use the term “value stream manager” as a substitute for production manager or supervisor in the factory. However, a value stream manager has full responsibility for the revenues, costs, and…
Michael Causey
Although medical-industry trade groups and many House and Senate members are lined up on one side, determined to repeal the medical device tax, the other side might have the final ace: A veto threat by President Obama.
Not so fast, say opponents who want to eliminate the 2.3-percent excise tax on…
Michelle LaBrosse
I recently took a class to learn how to navigate the Inside Passage to Alaska. The class was held on the rebuilt David B, a 65-ft wooden boat originally built in 1929 and still using its original diesel engine. This adventure came about because a colleague wanted me to help sail a 32-ft sailboat…
Alan Nicol
In my younger years, I might have asked that question to tell off someone who was getting in my face. Now I find it’s one of the most critical questions to ask when beginning a process improvement because often we either don’t really know the answer, or we answer incorrectly.
How can we answer…
NIST
Restoration is well underway for NIST’s 4.45-million newton (equivalent to 1 million pounds-force) deadweight machine, the largest in the world. The three-story-tall deadweight, comprising a stack of stainless-steel discs weighing about 50,000 pounds each, was disassembled last winter for the…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
This month’s column was prompted by an especially thoughtful commencement address by Michael Ward, reproduced in the May/June 2015 issue of Imprimis (Hillsdale College). Ward, of course, encouraged the students to strive for success, but interestingly predicted that failure is inevitable and is to…
Eston Martz
If you’ve read the first two parts of this tale, you know it started when I published a post that involved transforming data for capability analysis. When an astute reader asked why Minitab didn‘t seem to transform the data outside of the capability analysis, it revealed an oversight that…
Michael E. Gerber
There once was a man named Robert DeRopp who wrote a book titled The Master Game (Gateways Books, 2003). No need to discuss his book or his philosophy here, other than to say it had to do with the shaping of one’s life and options through a lens few of us have ever looked through before.
However…
Eston Martz
In my last post, I told you how I had double-checked the analysis in a post that involved running the Johnson transformation on a set of data before doing normal capability analysis on it. A reader asked why the transformation didn’t work on the data when you applied it outside of the capability…
Brian Maskell
I have been working with two multinational companies recently, and the need for “just do it” (JDI) daily improvements came up. One company is a pharmaceutical plant in Europe, the second an industrial equipment manufacturer in Indiana. Although the companies are very different, the team members in…
NIST
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have come up with a way to shrink a research instrument generally associated with large machines down to a pinpoint-precision probe.
This electron spin resonance probe employs a large-scale technique used for decades as a…
The QA Pharm
Verifying the effectiveness of corrective and preventive actions (CAPAs) closes the loop between identifying a problem and completing the actions to solve it. It’s reasonable to assume that if a problem is worth solving, it’s also worth verifying that the solution worked. However, given the wide…
Eston Martz
I don’t like the taste of crow, which is a shame, because I’m about to eat a huge helping of it.
I’m going to tell you how I messed up an analysis. But in the process, I learned some new lessons and was reminded of some older ones I should remember to apply more carefully.
This failure starts in…
