Ken Feldman

Have you seen the Lean Six Sigma rainbow of Belt colors? There is White, Yellow, Green, and Black. Let’s explore Yellow.

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.

It’s not practical to measure every value in a population, whether it be people or all the jars of peanut butter you produced. Taking samples helps. But if your samples are biased and don’t represent the population, then you have a biased statistic or estimator. Let’s learn how you can calculate an unbiased statistic.

Is there a simple graphical tool for looking at a series of linked hierarchical activities? Yes, a tree diagram would be a good one to use. Let’s see how it would work. If you have a series of hierarchical tasks and subtasks to complete before you reach some objective, then a tree diagram would allow […]

Do your processes deliver value for your customer? How do you know if what you do is valued by your customer? Let’s find out.

When you hear the word variance, you can think of it in terms of finance or statistics. In statistics, variance is a calculation describing the spread, or variation, of the data around the average, or mean, of the data.

Are you ready to dust off your calculus differential equations and Laplace transformations? No? Then we will have to provide a simpler discussion of what a transfer function, or Y=f(X), is all about. 

Sometimes you really need to look at problems in a creative and innovative manner. TRIZ is a problem-solving approach that fosters invention for project teams who have become stuck while trying to solve a business challenge.  TRIZ (Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadach) is a problem-solving methodology that was developed in the former Soviet Union by Genrich […]

Being busy and working hard don’t necessarily mean what you are doing will have value to your customer. Let’s see why not.

The variance inflation factor measures the degree of multicollinearity of multiple predictor variables in a multiple linear regression. Holy smokes, that’s a lot of big words. Let’s find out what it all means.

If your machines are not working, you can’t produce products for your customers. Your customers will likely not remain your customers for very long. Let’s see how Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) can keep your equipment up and running. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a maintenance strategy aimed at maximizing the productivity of equipment, machines, and […]

Spread comes in a variety of forms. It refers to the variation of the data and can be calculated in a number of different ways. Let’s explore these.

If you hear someone say, “Darn, I didn’t expect that to happen”, they are probably experiencing an unintended consequence from some action they took. No one plans for things to go awry, but unfortunately, they do.

If you have a question about how your process or organization is performing, statistics will be the methodology for answering those questions. Statistics is the discipline and science used for the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of your data. Statistics usually fall into one of two categories: Descriptive statistics: methods used to summarize or […]

The term standard order refers to the sequence of the runs you will do in your Design of Experiments. The question we will answer is whether to use the standard order or a random order.

It is important that you clearly specify your expectations about a company process or product. These detailed expectations are called specifications and serve as a guide as to how well you are satisfying both internal and external expectations. A specification (spec) is a detailed description of the requirements, characteristics, and features of a product, service, […]

Webster’s dictionary defines stratification as: formed, deposited, or arranged in stable layers or strata. That’s interesting, but how does it apply to Six Sigma? Let’s find out.

What do you picture when you hear the word stable? Words such as steady, consistent and minimal variation may come to mind. These words could also apply to your process. Let’s see what a stable process means. 

In 1903, famed writer H.G. Wells first described the importance of mathematical analysis. Samuel Wilks, in 1951, paraphrased Wells and developed this famous quote: “Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write.” Let’s see why he said that.

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. You can also say a picture of your data is worth a thousand words. The stem and leaf plot is one such picture. 

When doing statistical analysis, it is impractical and often impossible to gather all the available data. That is when you would seek to sample the data to analyze it and make decisions about your process. In statistics, a sample refers to a group of individuals, objects, or events that are selected from a larger population […]

In the Analyze phase of DMAIC, you will want to identify possible independent or predictor variables to help explain the relationship with your response or dependent variables. Correlation is a statistical tool to establish the strength of the relationship between your independent and dependent variables. Regression is used to predict your response variable as a […]

The dictionary defines a response as a reaction to something. A response variable would be defined as the reaction or effect on a dependent variable as a result of an experimental manipulation of independent variables.  Response variable When discussing Design of Experiments (DOE) and Regression, you can talk about independent variables, also known as the […]

The shortest distance between two places is a straight line. Unfortunately, you can’t alway do that in your work environment. Let’s see how a spaghetti diagram might help visualize how things move through your workplace.