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Subjective Probability of Project Success
One of the early lessons in all of our courses asks students to enter a number for the “subjective probability of success” for the project. Several students enter a 1 in this worksheet cell. This indicates that they believe that the project is certain to succeed. In the real world, this is extremely unlikely. Considering […]
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Why I Hate Hypothesis Testing
If it were up to me, statistical hypothesis inference testing would be entirely replaced by confidence intervals. Both methods provide exactly the same information, however: If you do some research you’ll find quite a body of literature complaining about the hypothesis testing approach. This is my small contribution to that cause.
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Has the Process Mean Changed?
Here’s an exercise from Pyzdek Institute Green Belt training. At a pharmaceutical company they have developed an IV drip device that has an advertised drip rate of 5 drops per minute. A sample of 10 “drippers” is taken from the process and tested by counting the number of drips that occur during a 10 minute […]
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The Value of Certification
While I agree that the martial arts terminology is unfortunate and even a bit silly, I also believe that professional recognition serves an important purpose. If the certification is rigorous (a big if, I admit,) then it signals mastery of a well-defined body of knowledge to prospective employers. The employers can then validate the certification […]
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A capability index question
The following question came to me from a student in my online Six Sigma Black Belt course: QUESTION: I am calculating Ppk‘s for various processes and some values are, for example -1.2 and 1.2. Is it acceptable to take the absolute value for -1.2 and say that both process performances are equal even though the […]
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Six Sigma Project Presentations in a Nutshell
I’ve reviewed thousands of improvement projects. I’ve lost count of how many project presentations I’ve attended, either for certification purposes or for presentations to leaders. I’ve come to the conclusion that most Green Belts and Black Belts simultaneously present too much information, and not enough information. If I may speak to Green Belts and Black […]
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Boosting Customer Value by Eliminating Non-value Activities
Many companies are investing significant effort into having their employees work harder to create more value for their customers, always striving to stay competitive. However, upon reflection, it’s clear that employees are already working diligently. Indeed, they’re engaged 99% of the time, striving to excel in their roles. The key challenge for a modern company […]
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NASA Admits Its Climate Data Quality Is No Better
Fox News reports that e-mail messages obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that NASA concluded that its own climate findings were inferior to those maintained by both the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) — the scandalized source of the leaked Climate-gate e-mails — and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric […]
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Online Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Training Released
The Pyzdek Institute has added Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training and certification to its portfolio of online and live courses on Process Excellence topics. The new course is written and presented by Thomas Pyzdek, author of The Six Sigma Handbook and numerous other authoritative works. “We have been teaching Lean Six Sigma to clients […]
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Poor Quality Malaria Drugs Causing Problems
Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report reported that between 26 percent and 44 percent of artemisinin-based malaria drugs sold in Madagascar, Senegal and Uganda “failed quality testing” because of impurities or insufficient amounts of active ingredient, the Associated Press reports. The study, which was conducted by the nongovernmental U.S. Pharmacopeia program and received funding from […]