Category: Concepts

You may need to be able to determine if your processes are acceptable and capable. Thankfully, there are capability and performance indicators such as Cp, Pp, Cpk, and Ppk that can help you make that determination.

In your regression model, one thing to look for is multicolinearity. It is a problem and can cause issues when you are interpreting results.

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.

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

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.

Business transformation and lean deployment take dedicated resources with a particular set of skills to ensure change and continuous improvement are embedded in an organization. The role of change agents has never been more vital in today’s super competitive business world, and we’ll show you why.

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.

Kanban is a tool used in Lean Manufacturing to visually manage the workflow through your processes. It is based on the concept of a pull system where things are only replaced as they are consumed. 

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.

You may think turnaround time has decreased from your baseline as a result of a process improvement. But has it really? The t statistic is one way to find the answer to that question.

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.

The word Normal generally has a positive connotation. When applied to statistics, the term Normal Distribution has essentially the same effect. Let’s see why. 

There are several ways that companies conduct inspections of their software. One such method is Fagan Style Software Inspection.

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.