Pyzdek Institute

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)

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

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

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

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…
A Lesson for Quality Professionals from The Pandemic

Our quality professions – quality/process improvement/Six Sigma/Lean – is long on anticipation and short on resilience. Merriam-Webster defines anticipation as a prior action that takes into account or forestalls a later action or the act of looking forward. Anticipation requires accurate forecasting. The pandemic has taught us that forecasting is usually wrong, often so wrong…
A Lean Process FMEA

In 1949, the US Military issued MIL-STD-1629, titled Procedures for Performing a Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis. It was reissued and reprinted numerous times thereafter. In practice, people refer to the method described in the MIL Standard as FMEA, often with a prefix: DFMEA for Design FMEA, PFMEA for Process FMEA and the like.…
How to Conduct a One-Way ANOVA Using Excel

One method of analyzing the difference between group means is analysis of variance. The ANOVA procedure follows the classical, statistical hypothesis, inference-testing format. First, state the null and alternative hypotheses. The ANOVA procedure creates a table that tests the null hypothesis of equal means against the alternative hypothesis that at least two groups have different…
The Crucial Intersection: INTJ Personality and Six Sigma Black Belts

If you’ve ever come across the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), you’ve probably stumbled on the INTJ (Introversion, iNtuition, Thinking, Judgment) personality type. This distinct personality type encompasses independence of thought, individualism, creativity, and an inherent desire for efficiency. And, interestingly enough, it’s a personality type that aligns perfectly with the characteristics we commonly see in…
Healthcare Waste

According to New England Journal of Medicine’s Journal Watch, Americans may be wasting half of the $3.6 trillion spent annually on healthcare. Researchers identified six studies, published from 2008 to 2019, in which components of our national medical waste were analyzed, and estimated the costs associated with each. Category Amount ($ billions) Excessive prices $169…