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You need to be SMART when writing the goals for your project charter: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Here’s how the SMART framework can help you write better goal statements.

Fractional factorial DOE is a cost- and time-effective designed experimentation statistical tool for understanding the impact of your process inputs on your process outputs. 

What does your process look like from 25,000 feet up in the air? Your extended process view can be described using SIPOC, or supplier, input, process, output, and customer. Let’s get in our plane and go up. 

A company with a Six Sigma deployment identifies a process improvement area within the business. It is easy to figure out what comes next – just define the problem, set the goal, select the project team, pick the team leader, and get out of the way, right? Well, sort of…but before deployment leaders get […]

The use of center points in your designed experiments can be valuable in determining the actual relationship between your input factors and your response variable. Let’s explain this in a little more detail. 

Benchmarking is a way of discovering what is the best performance being achieved – whether in a particular company, by a competitor, or by an entirely different industry. This information can then be used to identify gaps in an organization’s processes to achieve a competitive advantage. Thus it is important for Six Sigma practitioners […]

The Bartlett Test is named after the English statistician, Maurice Stevenson Bartlett. The test is also known as the Bartlett’s test for homogeneity of variances. It is most used in doing a 1-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). ANOVA is used to determine whether there is any statistical difference between the means of three […]

Understanding what quality targets are and how to center product uniformity around them is a helpful step in overall process improvement, ultimately leading to increased profits and customer satisfaction rates.

If you have a non-conforming or defective product coming off your production line, what do you do with it? Utilizing a strategy of containment might be the way to go. Let’s learn more about this. Containment of non-conforming products refers to the actions you take to prevent the distribution or use of products […]

Understanding and determining the upper and lower statistical limits are the key to determining tolerance range (TR). Find out more about this LSS concept.

Corrective action is the process, known as a corrective action plan (CAP), of taking the appropriate steps to identify the root cause of a problem and implementing a solution that corrects the root cause to prevent its recurrence. The aim is to improve the processes in place within an organization so that problems […]

A radar chart, also known as a spider chart, is a great tool to graphically compare multiple outcomes for specific characteristics and criteria. 

Getting to grips with the many different causes of defects and quality issues is key to ensuring business success and avoiding customer dissatisfaction. The cause and effect diagram is a clear, visual representation of all possible causes and keeps the team focused upon quality improvement.

Is the variation in your process data to be expected, or has something special occurred? A control chart will give you the answer. The X-bar and R chart will give you the details.

Fisher’s 1-way ANOVA is a classic analysis of variance utilized in statistics to determine if there are statistical differences between the means of two or more unrelated groups.

What is a Subject Matter Expert? Subject matter experts (SMEs) are people who have a significant amount of knowledge or experience regarding a specific subject. They can specialize in any kind of academic discipline, profession, or practice. Even though their area of expertise is relatively narrow compared to general consultants, there is still […]

There are several statistical tests which assume that independent data sets have equal, similar or equivalent variances. Violating this assumption could render any statistical conclusions invalid. 

With Six Sigma, customer satisfaction comes first. We’ve talked at length in the past about the various nomenclature, techniques, and so forth that drive Six Sigma. As a comprehensive discipline, it is a transformative means of making your organization the best it can be. However, it is a methodology and approach that takes […]

Six Sigma is all about what can be quantified and measured. So it is not surprising that organizations that utilize Six Sigma often prefer to measure success in terms of hard savings or dollars to the bottom line now. They are subsequently less impressed with soft savings, or the possibility of dollars to […]

Lean Six Sigma is a system that measures how well a process operates, with “six sigma” being the level of perfection in which processes operate at or below 3.4 defects per million units produced. In order to achieve this, companies must eliminate all but the most critical process steps and then re-engineer those remaining steps to be more efficient and effective.

It is important in business to have a sampling system in place to determine when to dump a pack of units dumped due to an unacceptable amount being defective. LTPD is part of this sampling system.

When things go wrong in the process, how do you know? And how do you know what to do?

Complex products and processes can often yield significant variation in output, with resultant poor customer satisfaction, especially when process inputs are not well controlled. By understanding and controlling our key process input variables, we have the perfect approach to keep output variation in check.  

Financial project metrics can be cumbersome to use and jargon-heavy. We demystify and simplify project return on investment, making the concept accessible to all and giving you the confidence to use it in your project management operations.

A major dilemma companies face today is the pressure to deliver short-term improvements and benefits while still contributing to longer-term breakthrough objectives. The 3-6-12-24 planning tool helps practitioners find a way out of this predicament.

When it comes to Six Sigma, data is your lifeblood. The ability to interpret what the data is saying is how you know whether you are on the right path. Further, it shows how you’re achieving your goals and objectives and avoiding roadblocks on your journey toward success. Accurately collected and analyzed data […]

Understanding discrete data will give you yet another tool for understanding your process measure or outcome. This article will explain the tips and traps of using discrete data in process improvement.

If you have a new machine or equipment, you need to be able to determine if it is going to have the potential to make the cut. That is where Cmk comes in.

Quality management should be a holistic approach. Process, product, and people are the three key elements of a company’s quality system and all of them need to be focused on for an overall improvement in performance. Why It Matters So, why consider this approach for your quality management? While there are many approaches […]

The Toyota Production System (TPS) serves as the foundation for Lean Manufacturing. Let’s explore this powerful method for improving your processes.  The Toyota Production System (TPS) is a manufacturing philosophy and a set of management practices developed by the Toyota Motor Corporation. It emphasizes continuous improvement, just-in-time production, and efficient use of resources, […]

Use these 10 questions when teaching DMAIC. Learn when and where some commonly used Six Sigma tools do – or don’t – apply; align the tools to the underlying question as part of this coaching task.

The Need for Adapting LSS Training The traditional LSS approach relies heavily on human expertise for data collection, analysis, and decision-making. While effective, this can be time-consuming, prone to errors, and limited in scope. AI, on the other hand, can process vast amounts of data in real-time, identify patterns that may not be […]

Deming’s 14 Points provide a roadmap to transform American Business and increase productivity and competitive position.  Without W. Edwards Deming, modern quality improvement might not exist. If you have never heard of Dr. Deming or his 14 Points for Management, welcome aboard. If you have, get ready to reacquaint yourself.   What Are Deming’s […]

What Is Linearity? Before understanding linearity, we must understand another measurement error known as bias. Bias is a consistent mistake that occurs in measurement. For example, every measure taken with your scale comes out heavier than the actual weight. Linearity measures the consistency of a bias over the entire range of possible measurements. […]

Quality management is an essential aspect of any business that strives to deliver products and services that meet or exceed customer expectations. The core principles of Quality Management were developed as part of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) seven principles of quality management. Traditional quality management systems like Total Quality Management (TQM) […]

In many industries, it is possible to find distributed data that does not follow the typical bell-shaped curve. In some instances, you will find that there is a much longer tail on the right side. This type of distribution follows the 80/20 rule, which states that roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% […]

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) can be accomplished using any one of many methodologies. IDOV is one popular methodology for designing products and services to meet Six Sigma standards. IDOV is a four-phase process that consists of Identify, Design, Optimize, and Verify. These four phases parallel the four phases of the traditional Six […]

You will often see attribute data and discrete data being used interchangeably. At some level, they are similar. But, if we dive a little deeper, you’ll see that there’s a bit more distinction than meets the eye.

Process time is the time it takes for one or more inputs to be transformed into a finished product or service by a business process.

Achieving world-class quality isn’t something every organization can do, because so much of what makes it possible cannot be taught. It boils down to mindset and certain character traits that some people have, some people don’t. Do you?

The definition of non-conformity is provided and then described with examples of what non-conformities involve, giving examples of the process approach to facilitate the management of the non-conformities.

Consider a production process that produced 10,000 widgets in January and experienced a total of 100 rejected widgets after a quality control inspection (i.e., failure rate = 0.01, success rate = 0.99). A Six Sigma project was deployed to fix this problem and by March the improvement plan was in place. In April, […]

Do you possess a crystal ball to see what the future brings for your organization? Probably not, but you do have a statistical version of a crystal ball by using trend analysis. 

Test plans, also called test protocols, are formal documents that typically outline requirements, activities, resources, documentation, and schedules to be completed. Some form of test plan should be developed before any test. The key reasons for developing test plans are: The Importance of a Plan Before embarking on any testing, experimentation, and so […]

With increasing competitive and market pressures, understanding customer requirements and delivering high-quality products, processes and services has never been more important. By implementing a Quality Operating System, you can ensure that quality improvement is every employee’s responsibility and focus.

A predetermined motion time system can be useful for everything from estimating labor costs to balancing production lines. It is a concept worth exploring for its myriad applications.

Process mapping is one of the basic quality or process improvement tools used in Lean Six Sigma. It has acquired more importance in recent times, given the complexities of processes and the need to capture and visualize knowledge that resides with the people who perform the task. Often process mapping is looked at […]

Big Data vs. Small Data Big data vs. small data, which should you be paying attention to? Data is generated throughout an organization. You’re gathering it when selling products, producing things, and even just interacting with customers. However, when we start talking about data, the notion of big data and small data enter […]

When it comes to sampling plans, there are some terms that are absolutely crucial to be aware of. These are Acceptable Quality Level (AQL), Indifference Quality Level (IQL), and Rejectable Quality Level (RQL).

Lean management – often called “Lean Management,” “The Toyota Way” or simply “Lean” – is a systematic method for waste minimization and process improvement in any type of service or manufacturing