Category: Concepts

Finding bugs during the testing phase of software is paramount to making sure customers receive a product that works as it is intended to.Having bugs in software is not uncommon. It is, however, extremely important to do rigorous testing to find them ahead of the release of the software or product to the public. Overview: […]

Will being a Black Belt help you beat up your competition? In a way, yes. A skilled and experienced Lean Six Sigma Black Belt will help your organization improve all you do. Let’s see how.

During the Six Sigma Improvement Stage of DMAIC, you will need to develop strategies and ideas for improving your process. There are three steps to coming up with viable improvement solutions. These steps are idea generation, organization, and assessment.  Brainstorming can be defined as a structured method of generating unconstrained ideas/ solutions and gaining engagement/involvement […]

Balanced experiments are a common class of designed experiment where the factors that are manipulated are set at levels that occur equally within each level of the other factors. This setup provides several advantages, including the need for few experimental runs, lack of correlation between factors, and simplicity.

Concept engineering is how you measure twice and cut once. It’s how you learn from mistakes before you make them. This practice is a way to consider problems and possibilities that may emerge from initial design to final production.

See Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

In any business arrangement, it is necessary to know who exactly has the power to make decisions. This is true for everything from approving a sale to granting the request for a change in a process be implemented. Just being in a position of power does not make you a great leader. A lot of […]

The Alternate Hypothesis, written as Ha, is a subset of the larger topic of hypothesis testing. The Alternate Hypothesis is the default statement about a specific condition of your data and allows you to draw important conclusions about the population from which the sample data came.

A buffer can be simply defined as something that serves as a protective barrier. Let’s see how this might apply in the context of technology and computing as well as manufacturing. In the context of technology and computing, a buffer is a temporary storage area that holds data while it is being transferred from one […]

Don’t you hate it when you make a mistake? Well, an alpha risk is just that. Let’s learn what that mistake is and how to keep from making it.

There are all types of business metrics. Some examples would be sales revenue, customer retention rate, and net profit. Each of these and others helps provide you with a fuller picture of how your business is doing. Overview: What are business metrics? Business metrics are metrics that are quantifiable and utilized to assess the performance […]

Some tasks are repetitive, mind-numbing, and lack the sort of creativity that promotes active engagement. If possible, these types of processes should be automated so that the type of energy needed to find places where your organization can evolve may blossom. Businesses thrive on having employees that are engaged in the work that they are […]

At the gun range, your goal is to hit the target. Accuracy will be measured by how close you come to that target. The same is true of your process.  

Why do you weigh yourself before you start your diet? You probably want to get a starting point or baseline to help measure your progress so you know whether the diet is working or you have reached your goal. 

By standardizing a project, an organization is better able to analyze the effects of environmental factors that may have otherwise been overlooked. Baselining is one way to achieve this.

3P? How hard could that be? It’s only three letters: P-P-P. You will see that there is more than meets the eye.

The bad news is that you have problems to solve. The good news is that there are a number of simple, yet powerful tools that can help you. The 8D process is one of them.

An underlying assumption for the use of many statistical tools is that your data is normally distributed. But, how do you know? The A-square calculation for the Anderson Darling Normality Test will tell you.

Even a little bit of leftovers each day can add up to something big. That’s the basic principle and motivation behind accessory planning. The whole purpose of this activity is to find ways to use what would otherwise be wasted to generate further value. Overview: What is accessory planning? Most companies engage in accessory planning […]

The design and manufacture of highly complex products and systems requires close co-operation between multiple suppliers and customers. Without well-defined quality plans and methodologies, products will neither get to market on time, or on budget, nor be defect free. 

5S is often thought of as the foundation for continuous improvement. While traditionally considered only applicable to a manufacturing environment, it’s highly relevant for non-manufacturing operations as well. In this article, we will define 5S, discuss its benefits, and consider its importance to an organization. Overview: What is 5S?  There is some debate as to […]

Average incoming quality is a simple, effective and accessible metric that indicates input quality within a process. Accurate assessment of average quality depends on several other factors, including an established framework for evaluation and consistent screening techniques. Overview: What is average incoming quality? In the context of lean manufacturing and business management practices, average incoming […]

In random sampling, this number is the fine line that separates an accepted lot and a rejected one.

When talking about an alias, alias structure or aliasing, you are talking about Design of Experiments (DOE). More specifically, you are referring to the confounding of effects in a fractional factorial experiment. Aliasing occurs when the estimate of a factor effect  is difficult to distinguish because of the impact of other factors in your experiment. […]