• The Benefit Effort Matrix – A Tool to Determine Where to Apply Your Resources

    The Benefit Effort Matrix – A Tool to Determine Where to Apply Your Resources

    An excerpt from my latest book, Everything is a Process. Available on Amazon. I have twenty potential projects at my company. Which are the ones that provide the greatest benefit to the company and should be completed first? Most people have heard a quote similar to that above. Where is the best place to spend […]

  • It’s Time to Ditch Process Capability Indices

    It’s Time to Ditch Process Capability Indices

    Process capability indices (PCI) have long been popular with many quality professionals. But they’ve also been controversial and a number of reputable experts have advocated that they be abandoned.[1] I tend to agree. Maybe it’s time to ditch process capability indices. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of PCIs. The Ugly of PCIs […]

  • Process Capability-Let’s Skip the Jargon

    Process Capability-Let’s Skip the Jargon

    To many quality engineers and managers, process capability is a jumbled confusion of ideas expressed in jargon that only the anointed can understand. Let’s skip the jargon. Imagine the following scene. The boss rushes into the quality director’s office. He’s obviously distraught. (Boss enters, walking quickly from stage right.) Boss: “Jane, we’ve got a serious […]

  • An Acceptance Sampling Question

    This thread recently appeared in myASQ: Question by Aju: Hello Team, We have a situation where we did double sampling on Incoming parts from a Supplier(Machine shop). The lot was accepted and released to Inventory. These parts then later got assigned to WO and during assembly, the Manufacturing team found one non-conforming part (missing slots). […]

  • It’s Time To Ditch the 1.5-Sigma Shift

    It’s Time To Ditch the 1.5-Sigma Shift

    One of Six Sigma’s most hotly debated features is the infamous 1.5-sigma shift. Here’s how it works. In Six Sigma we assume that the customer’s actual experience will be worse than what we predict during capability analysis. We add a “fudge factor” that assumes that the process will shift by approximately 1.5 standard deviations. I’ve […]

  • Making Small Improvements is Harder Than You Think

    Making Small Improvements is Harder Than You Think

    I heard a speaker talking one time who said, “if you improve an organization’s productivity by 3 percent each month, you will double your productivity in 25 months.” He is right, you will double your productivity, but the challenge will be keeping those gains. I worked with another Lean Six Sigma Black Belt in our […]

  • Convert Opinion to Continuous Data For 15 Bucks (Part 1)

    Convert Opinion to Continuous Data For 15 Bucks (Part 1)

    We will start with a statement of the obvious. Our quality-related data comes to us in many forms. Assuming our sensors, measurement systems and measurement methods work well, we often get streams of continuous data that’s useful to assess quality. The analysis of this type of data is usually straightforward. But sometimes, there is no […]

  • Fight Boredom With an Improvement Project

    Fight Boredom With an Improvement Project

    Have you ever had a boring job? One where you did the same things day-after-day for months or years on end? Well then, shame on you! There is a saying that the biggest room of all is the room for improvement. No matter what your job is, there is room to do it better. Figuring […]

  • The Visual Safety FMEA

    The Visual Safety FMEA

    A few weeks ago, we pondered the use of a simplified, visual approach to FMEA as an alternative to classic Failure Mode & Effects Analysis (FMEA). The goal of Visual FMEA is to draw more people and their skill sets into the conversation about risk identification and remediation. While the visual approach to FMEA isn’t […]

  • Experiments With a Sample of n=Me

    Experiments With a Sample of n=Me

    In statistics a great deal of attention is paid to proper sample size, and rightly so. There are many tools and techniques devoted to solving the problem of how many to include in your sample. Computers have made it easy to perform the calculations necessary to determine sample size. In science there is a widely […]