Ken Feldman

How much can you learn about your process sitting in your office? According to Genchi Gembutsu, you can’t learn much. In Japanese, genchi means “actual place,” and gembutsu means “actual thing.” In the Toyota Production System (TPS), this concept is interpreted as “to go and see.” Let’s explore this a little further. 

You walk by waste in your organization every day. The acronym DOTWIMP can help you identify and analyze your seven most common sources of waste. 

Degrees of Freedom (DF) can be thought of as the amount of information you have to compute certain statistics. The more you want to compute, the more data and information you need. Let’s learn more about how to compute and use DF. You can think of DF as statistical money that you can spend to […]

If you plot your data on a histogram, the resulting graphic will illustrate how your data is distributed. This distribution can provide a lot of information about your data and the process from which it came from. Let’s learn some more about distributions. Once you have collected your desired data, you can display the data […]

Directives are an important tool for organizations that seek to align employees with their goals, increase efficiency, and promote a culture of continuous improvement. Understanding Directives: Benefits, Best Practices, and Common Questions Directives are a critical tool for organizations seeking to improve their performance and achieve their goals. By providing clear guidance and expectations, directives […]

DOE (Design of Experiments) can be defined as a set of statistical tools that deal with the planning, executing, analyzing, and interpretation of controlled tests to determine if there is a casual relationship between your process factors or variables and your process output. Overview: What is DOE?  Two common approaches to DOE are a full […]

DMEDI stands for: Define, Measure, Explore, Develop, and Implement. This differs from the basic Six Sigma methodology of DMAIC which stands for: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. Both methodologies are designed to improve your processes and products. Whereas, DMAIC is designed for incremental improvements of existing processes, DMEDI focuses on more robust improvements for […]

Wouldn’t it be great if your production process ran smoother? Maybe Heijunka is the solution. Let’s find out more about it.

Since there is variation in all processes, how can you tell whether the variation is due to random expected variation, or something unexpected? The control chart is a tool for making that distinction. Let’s learn how that is done. 

If you understand multiple linear regression, you already know a lot about the General Linear Model (GLM). Let’s learn some more about how and when to use the GLM. 

A design of experiments (DOE) is a set of powerful designed experimentation statistical tools for understanding the impact that varying your process inputs will have on the outputs of your process. 

The famed statistician, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, frequently talked about data and said, “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.” Let’s learn some more about data. Data refers to any information, facts, or statistics that can be collected, stored, and analyzed. It can be in the form of numbers, text, images, audio, or […]

Unfortunately, sometimes your process produces unacceptable output. These are usually referred to as defects or defectives. Let’s examine what a defective item is and contrast it with a defect. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a defective as: having a defect or flaw or imperfect in form, structure, or function. Simply put, a defect is a flaw […]

If you look at the dashboard of your car, you will see a display of the current real-time status of important metrics. You can do the same thing with your business metrics.

If you stretch a rubber band and let it go, it will snap back to its original position. The same is true of your any process improvements you make. The control plan is intended to help you maintain the gains you have achieved. 

When doing hypothesis testing, there is a risk of making two types of errors. One of them is the consumer’s risk, which is when the null hypothesis is rejected when it shouldn’t have been. 

Would you expect the average of a sample to be the same as the average of the population from which it came? No. Why not? Because of randomness and sampling error. How should we handle that? Let’s find out.

Is quality free, as claimed by quality expert and author Philip Crosby? Or, is there a cost of quality (COQ) that your organization needs to understand and manage? 

C-level has a vastly different definition than sea level. One refers to the levels of senior management in an organization and the other is a measure of elevation. Let’s explore this in a little more detail. When walking through the halls of your organization’s offices, have you heard someone say, “Hey Chief”? Does that mean […]

Is there a relationship between wearing your seatbelt and whether or not you survive an auto accident? Is there a relationship between studying and whether you pass an exam? These are the types of questions a Chi-Square Test can answer.

No two snowflakes are alike, goes the old saying. Variation is everywhere. But, is some variation predictable and due to the variation in your process, while some is not? Common cause variation is a part of every process. Let’s learn more about it. 

If you look at the dashboard of your car, you will see information related to the car’s performance and the progress of your journey. When you look at your business dashboard, you can see examples of similar information.  

Organizations love to talk in terms of averages. They talk about average sales, average units produced, or the average time to complete an invoice. But, is that adequate? Let’s explore other measures of central tendency and answer that question.

Does your organization have a centralized department or function that monitors and tracks the performance of your operations relative to your customers? If you do, let’s see what it might be doing. The term “Customer Operations Performance Center” is not a widely recognized or standardized term, so its exact meaning may vary depending on the […]