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Minitab LLC
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otton. Given that it’s the most widely used fiber in clothing, you’re probably wearing some right now. We love cotton’s comfortable properties and soft feel. But as everyone who’s ironed a cotton shirt or pants knows, these same properties can make cotton-based fabric particularly prone to…
Bruce Hamilton
Significant digits, the number of digits to the right of a decimal point that are warranted by the accuracy of the means of measurement, are a critical part of scientific investigation. In developing products and services, the concept is essential. For example, how many products have failed to “…
Productivity Press
Of the 100 companies named to Fortune magazine’s list of the world’s largest companies in 1956, only 29 of them remain on that list today. Many lost their way because they failed to recognize the changes taking place, or were too big to react quickly enough to shifting market conditions.…
John Flaig
Story update 7/08/2011: We corrected an error in Figure 2, and in the section preceded by "Expressed symbolically for a stable process...".
Two topics that have generated significant interest and frequent comments are, “Is normality required for control charts?” and “You need to estimate the tail…
Steven Ouellette
Although we may use the define, measure, analyze, improve, control (DMAIC) mnemonic to help guide us through our problem solving, that doesn’t really give us a lot of specific direction (as I bemoan in my Top 10 Stupid Six Sigma Tricks No. 4). Good experimental design technique is critical to being…
It seemed like a good idea at the time to Jon Shupenus, U.S. Army Forces Command’s process improvement specialist and lean Six Sigma Black Belt. Shupenus was attending a Department of Defense performance management seminar in 2010 when Kirk Nicholas, director of the Army’s continuous process…
Stewart Anderson
Not all customers are equally profitable. Different customers have different needs, and hence different costs to serve. The overall profitability of a business is a function of the profitability of individual customers and customer groups.
Many businesses measure customer satisfaction but they…
Paul Naysmith
I greatly believe in training. I have been fortunate to work in businesses that also believed in having trained and qualified professionals in their organization. I have personally and professionally benefited from that philosophy, and I have gained new knowledge as a result.
Since graduating from…
Stewart Anderson
Often a firm is confronted with the key question of whether the quality of its products and services should be improved. For many readers, the question may even seem illogical: How could it not be beneficial for a firm to improve the quality of its products and services?
On closer analysis, however…
Donald J. Wheeler
Whenever we present capability indexes the almost inevitable follow-up question is, “What is the fraction nonconforming?” What this question usually means is, “Tell me what these capability indexes mean in terms that I can understand.” These questions have resulted in multiple approaches to…
Mike Richman
Last month I wrote an article entitled “Being Comfortable in a World of Never-Ending Change.” Editor in Chief Dirk Dusharme and I also covered this story on the April 29th edition of Quality Digest Live (QDL). QDL, by the way, is our live video show wrap-up of the week’s top industry news and…
Tom Pyzdek
Lean, Six Sigma, and quality provide a set of tools and a framework for achieving excellence in any process. Quality professionals are able to help organizations determine if customer requirements are properly defined and if the organization is meeting those requirements. Lean practitioners have a…
Mark R. Hamel
Among other things, an effective lean management system drives process adherence and process performance. The daily accountability portion of the system includes brief tiered meetings with the stakeholders.
At the tier I level, the core meeting participants are pretty much the natural work team…
Ryan E. Day
For those of us frustrated by the prevalence of mediocrity and apathy in the management theater, there may yet be hope. The Avery Point Group’s annual employment study found a sharp increase in demand for lean and Six Sigma skills this year. That would seem to indicate companies and businesses…
William A. Levinson
The cause-and-effect diagram is one of the seven basic quality improvement tools, and this article will illustrate its synergy with the affinity diagram. The article will then discuss how modern computer technology can enhance both techniques to create keyword-searchable quality records that…
John Flaig
In the article, “Four Control Chart Myths from Foolish Experts,” by Davis Balestracci (Quality Digest Daily, March 30, 2011) the following comments were made regarding what Balestracci considers statistical process control (SPC) myths:
“Myth No. 4: Three standard deviation limits are too…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
As we continue our sabbatical journey, more opportunities for the improvement of management practices continue to appear. This month, the overriding theme that I have observed is the lack of front-line performance that seems to be a result of the system. I have been reminded of the many times we as…
Angelo Lyall
It seems the most popular way to improve a process these days is by applying the glorious "Lean Toolkit." Many companies focus on learning and implementing process improvement practices introduced by Toyota without realizing the same success that Toyota achieved. How can it be that so many firms…
Mark R. Hamel
Every once in awhile people will ask me to (discretely) evaluate a kaizen event team’s effectiveness. I don’t necessarily relish doing that when it is intended for the purpose of team comparisons, but it’s not an unfair request from senior leaders.
Someday, I should probably try to pull the…
Donald J. Wheeler
One-hundred-percent inspection is commonly used to avoid shipping nonconforming product. Each of the items produced is measured and judged to be either conforming or nonconforming. The conforming items get shipped, and the nonconforming items get set aside for use as factory-authorized replacement…
Jim Benson
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking. —Alfred Korzybski
Over the last several years, I’ve studied a lot of processes and watched communities grow around them. I’ve been a member of many of these communities.…
Mike Richman
Welcome to Quality Digest Daily 2.0! This new format represents a significant re-imaging of our flagship brand (the industry’s only daily newsletter), which we first launched nearly two years ago. I hope you notice that we’ve added more video content to the newsletter as well as greater editorial…
Minitab LLC
Ford Motor Co. is one of the largest automakers in the United States, producing millions of automobiles each year at 70 plants worldwide. According to J. D. Power and Associates Initial Quality Survey, Ford has received more top rankings than any other automaker since 2007. It’s no surprise that…
William A. Levinson
The first part of this article illustrated the kinds of problems that can happen when data from non-normal processes are plotted on traditional control charts, and when traditional process capability assessments are applied to these data. This second part will show what to do about these problems…
Davis Balestracci
My March 30, 2011 article ended with wisdom from Yogi Berra as a warning to the quality profession. Some prickly reactions to it got me thinking about the last 30 years or so of quality improvement.
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The 1980 NBC television show, “If Japan Can, Why Can’t We?” introduced the…
