iSixSigma Staff

Concomitant variables are secondary variables that may affect a process under study but are not the significant parameters that the research is designed to understand or control.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’ […]

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.

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.

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.

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.