Ken Feldman

As the name implies, process capability is the ability of your process to meet your customer’s expectations. There are a number of calculated metrics which can be used to indicate your process capability.

Chi-square analysis is a powerful tool for examining the relationship between variables formatted in a table. One consumer products company used it to look at its consumers in a different way, resulting in a significant increase in sales and profitability of its product portfolio.  Traditionally, an organization’s sales and marketing department makes advertising decisions based […]

After experiencing multiple adverse medical events, one large hospital system moved from the sole use of a reactive root cause analysis approach to include a proactive Failure Modes and Effects Analysis strategy, which significantly reduced adverse medical events.  As was the strategy at the time, a large tax supported public health system relied on root […]

Stop guessing what your customers value in your product or service. Use conjoint analysis to determine what features are most important to them and have the data to support your decisions. Conjoint analysis is often described as a design of experiments (DOE) for marketing. It is a structured way to help you identify and evaluate […]

Don’t you hate it when you make a mistake? A type 1 error is a mistake you can make when erroneously interpreting your data. Let’s learn what that mistake is and how to keep from making it.

You have heard the old saying that no two grains of sand are alike. Variation is everywhere. But, some variation is predictable, some is not? Special cause variation in the non predictable type of variation. Let’s learn more about it. 

Never-ending improvement is the heart of any continuous improvement effort. PDSA, developed by Dr. W. Edwards Deming, is one of the fundamental tools used today for continuous improvement.

The interquartile range is a measure of the variation in your data. While it is a calculated number, it is often shown in a graphical format on a box plot.

When someone says your data has kurtosis, do you think this is referring to some disease? Kurtosis can be a natural state of your data. Let’s find out more about kurtosis and what it means.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming is often quoted as saying, “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” But should the change be radical or incremental? Kaikaku is the Japanese word for “radical change”

How hard can it be to make orange juice? As one large global company found out, no single Six Sigma tool will solve all the problems in an organization. However, the integration of a number of tools such as correlation, Measurement System Analysis (MSA), control charts, and process capability will help solve many of them.  […]

Let’s look at the financial division of a global conglomerate. One of its businesses was providing loans to corporate clients. Although a dominant player in the market, the company still had to compete with other organizations to provide financing and lending to myriad businesses. By using binary logistic regression to help refine its lending offers, […]

Providing the proper organizational environment for engaging people in your continuous improvement effort will provide large benefits for your organization. In this study, we look at how the combination of using control charts and providing an environment for people engagement helped one company achieve significant financial benefits. Control charts are a powerful tool for understanding […]

Most businesses today brag about how they make data driven decisions on important company issues. But, what if the data is not accurate or reflective of what is really going on in the company? You might be making the wrong business decisions and inadvertently costing your company lots of money. Let’s see how one company […]

A company producing commercial ink products noticed that injury rates during one step in their manufacturing process were rising after the introduction of a new product. A Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt (MBB) consultant was hired to help the company try to resolve this serious problem. Was there a simple solution, or would it […]

Culture is the “white whale” of leadership: in Moby Dick, Captain Ahab was obsessed with capturing the white whale, and modern leaders have a similar obsession with developing organizational culture.  Lean Six Sigma organizations task themselves with fostering a culture of continuous improvement (or kaizen) that draws from customer requirements, objective data and metrics, and […]

In many cases, you want to compare the means of samples. But, comparing variances can be just as important. The F test is the statistical tool you would use for that.  

6S is the formal activity of organizing the workplace and serves as the foundation of any continuous improvement effort. Explore the 6S and learn how to implement them in your organization.

A process map is a hierarchical method for displaying processes that illustrates how a product or transaction is processed. It is a visual representation of the workflow either within a process — or an image of the whole operation. Process mapping comprises a stream of activities that transforms a well-defined input or set of inputs into a pre-defined set of outputs.

TRIZ (pronounced “TREEZ”, the Russian acronym for the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) is an established science, methodology, tools and knowledge- and model-based technology for stimulating and generating innovative ideas and solutions for problem-solving. It is short for Teoriya Resheniya Izobreatatelskikh Zadatch.

The word scrum (short for scrummage) is usually used in the context of rugby. But how would it be used when talking about process improvement? Let’s find out. In rugby, a scrum is a method of restarting play after the ball goes out of bounds or there is a penalty. It involves players packing closely […]

You will commonly hear the word scrum used when you are watching a rugby match. But it is also used in the context of an agile project management framework that helps teams structure and manage their work through a set of values, principles, and practices. A Scrum Master is a role in the Scrum framework, […]

The letter Z is not just the sign of Zorro or a segment on “Sesame Street.” It also has a number of statistical connotations. Let’s explore those and more.

Can your organization really achieve zero defects in everything it does? Probably not, but it is a worthy goal to shoot for. Let’s learn more about the concept and how it might help your organization do better.