All Features
Davis Balestracci
My last column, “Dealing With Count Data and Variation,” showed how a matrix presentation of stratified count data could be quite effective as a common-cause strategy. I’ll use this column to review some key concepts of count data as well as to demonstrate the first of two common statistical…
Akhilesh Gulati
An important concept within TRIZ is that someone, somewhere, has already solved your current problem. In other words, they have “been there, done that.” Or course, the problem has to be clearly stated, in a generic sense, to enable the recognition of existing valid solutions.
TRIZ is not alone in…
Bob Emiliani
The lean community continues to face a problem that hurts efforts to advance progressive lean management: It is the great difficulty in clearly separating and effectively communicating the difference between real lean and fake lean, i.e., lean management done right vs. lean management done wrong…
Arun Hariharan
On a recent visit to Japan, I had an opportunity to visit Toyota’s headquarters. During a meeting with some of its top executives, I asked one of them what role the senior leadership played in Toyota’s much-admired quality philosophy. The reply I received was, like many things about Toyota and…
Joel Smith
Learning to ride a bike is a rite of passage for any kid, so much so that we even use the expression “taking the training wheels off” for all kinds of situations. We say it to mean that we are going to let someone perform an activity on his own after removing some safeguard, even though we know he…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
Last evening my wife, Carole, and I attended a celebratory dinner for the family of one of my former students. Luca, my student, originally from Italy, brought his wife, Olivia, and his young daughter, Kendra.
Olivia, originally from Uganda, is a family physician working primarily with…
Patrick Runkel
If you teach statistics or quality statistics, you’re probably already familiar with the cuckoo egg data set.
The common cuckoo has decided that raising baby chicks is a stressful, thankless job. It has better things to do than fill the screeching, gaping maws of cuckoo chicks, day in and day out…
Gary Phillips
For decades now, the measurement systems analysis (MSA) approach has been the predominant method for evaluating measurement systems capability. Although this method is widely considered to be an acceptable and comprehensive approach throughout most of the world, a growing number of specialized…
Donald J. Wheeler
One of the common tools of quality assurance is acceptance sampling. Acceptance sampling uses the observed properties of a sample drawn from a lot or batch to make a decision about whether to accept or reject that lot or batch. While the textbooks are full of complex descriptions of various…
Joel Smith
In part 1, part 2, and part 3, we shared our blind wine-tasting experiment, the survey results, and the experimental results, respectively. To wrap things up, we’re going to see if the survey results tied to the experimental results in any meaningful way.
First, we look at whether self-identified…
Joel Smith
In part 1 of “Blind Wine,” we introduced our blind wine-tasting experimental setup, which included some survey questions asked ahead of time of each participant. In part 2 we looked at the results of that survey. Here we’ll examine how well the survey results align with the experimental results.…
Joel Smith
In part 1, we introduced our blind wine-tasting experimental setup, which included some survey questions asked ahead of time of each participant.
The four questions asked were: 1. On a scale of one to 10, how would you rate your knowledge of wine? 2. How much would you typically spend on a bottle…
Davis Balestracci
I was teaching a class and asked participants to create a control chart of an indicator that was important to them. A lab supervisor presented me with a chart on the number of procedures her department performed and told me that it wasn’t very useful.
She wanted to use the chart for staffing…
Joel Smith
Already relaxed on his first day in Napa, Brutus and his wife, Suzy, decide to visit their favorite winery just before lunch to taste its new Cabernet Sauvignon. The owner recognizes them as they walk in the door and seats them on the patio overlooking the vineyard. Two glasses appear, and as the…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
I recently noticed that Starbucks initiated a College Achievement Plan. Starbucks’ partners (employees) who pursue a college degree at Arizona State University (ASU) will receive some combination of tuition reimbursement, scholarships, and other financial aid from the company to help them graduate…
Carly Barry
The Six Sigma students at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology are at it again! A few months back, we blogged about the Six Sigma project they did to reduce food waste at the on-campus dining center.
This time, the students—led by Dr. Diane Evans, Six Sigma black belt and associate professor of…
MIT Management Executive Education
Lean production, high -performance work systems, virtual communications, and collaboration applications are all examples of the latest tools, technology, and processes executives are encouraged to implement to improve productivity and efficiency. But why are there more useful tools and processes…
Abdallah Samaha
Lin Engineering is a California-based manufacturer of hybrid step motors that was founded in 1987 as a consulting company specializing in step-motor applications. Today, Lin Engineering is the largest manufacturer of 0.9-degree step motors in the motion control industry. As the quality and custom-…
Davis Balestracci
Author's note: To my non-U.S. readers, I apologize for using the sport of baseball to make my points today—and during the World Cup, no less! It’s a perfect context, however, and I hope you will be able to understand the main points.
In my last column, I talked about the different types of control…
Peter J. Sherman
Who says business luncheons are a waste of time? Recently, I enjoyed one of the most productive business luncheons of my career. In February, I was dining with two senior-level professionals at an IT staffing firm. After the usual chitchat about the recent snowstorms and traffic snarls, we started…
Donald J. Wheeler
One of the common tools of quality assurance is acceptance sampling. Acceptance sampling uses the observed properties of a sample drawn from a lot or batch to make a decision about whether to accept or reject that lot or batch. Textbooks are full of complex descriptions of various acceptance…
Patrick Runkel
You know what really gets on my nerves? A lot of things.
That slow, slinky way that cats walk by. Grrrr.
The rude, abrupt arrival of delivery persons in their obnoxiously loud trucks. (Why do they always pull up just as I'm settling down for a nap?) Grrrr.
Total strangers who reach…
Jay Arthur—The KnowWare Man
When looking at any existing process, people often have a hard time visualizing the enormous amount of delay, waste, and nonvalue-added work involved. That’s where a time value map comes in; it makes the invisible waste visible. A time value map shows value-added and nonvalue-added activities and…
Eston Martz
Remember The Little Engine That Could, the children’s story about self-confidence in the face of huge challenges? In it, a train engine keeps telling itself, “I think I can” while carrying a very heavy load up a big mountain. Next thing you know, the little engine has done it, but until that…
Donald J. Wheeler
One thing burned into the brains of those who survive a statistics class is that you have to specify an alpha-level before you do anything statistical. And when it comes to statistical inference, they are correct. But just what does the alpha-level represent? What does it mean in practice? Read on…
