by Alex Orlov, guest blogger

While it has been called the "million-dollar methodology" for the significant investment sometimes required to deliver results, Six Sigma has a wealth of practices that can be adapted to small and medium industries, home businesses and even personal finances. 

Organizations have used Six Sigma as a reliable part of the quality improvement process since 1986. And while a large Six Sigma project could cost anything from $1,000 to $1 million in work-hours and other resources, the results of such projects often far outweigh the investment. In addition to the direct...

Unless you’re 3 years old, you probably can’t have things just the way you want them all the time.  

You can’t always have peanut butter and ranch dressing on your toast. Or ketchup on your pineapple. Or sugar sprinkles on your peas.

But there is one small arena in life over which you can still exert your control. 

Tools > Options in Minitab's statistical software allows you to change selected default settings in the software, without having to throw a temper tantrum first.

This powerful, underutilized feature in Minitab may save you from the inconvenience of having to change a default setting...

Control charts are used to monitor the stability of processes, and can turn time-ordered data for a particular characteristic—such as product weight or hold time at a call center—into a picture that is easy to understand. These charts indicate when there are points out of control or unusual shifts in a process.

Statistically speaking, control charts help you detect nonrandom sources of variation in the data. In other words, they separate variation due to common causes from variation due to special causes, where:

• Common cause variation is variation that is naturally inherent in a process, and...

You know the drill…you’re in Six Sigma training and you’re learning how to conduct a design of experiment (DOE). Everything is making sense, and you’ve started thinking about how you’ll apply what you are learning to find the optimal settings of a machine on the factory floor. You’ve even got the DOE setup chosen and you know the factors you want to test …

Then … BAM! … You’re on your own and you immediately have issues analyzing the data. The design you’ve chosen might actually not be the best for the results you need.  It's a classic case of learning something in theory that becomes much more...

Here at the lightsaber factory, we've completed several steps in doing a capability analysis:

• We made sure our data was collected and entered correctly in Minitab
• We identified the distribution of the data
• We made sure all of our assumptions checked out

We’re getting close to our deadline, and it’s finally time to carry out our Capability Analysis and see if we are manufacturing our lightsabers to the correct specifications as set forth by the Jedi Temple.

First, let’s go to Stat > Quality Tools > Capability Analysis > Normal.  (If you want to play along and you don't already have it, get...

I had the privilege of talking with Sue Schlegel, Lean Six Sigma black belt and quality improvement mentor at White Sands Missile Range, which is located just outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Schlegel and an improvement team at White Sands recently conducted a Lean Six Sigma project to streamline surveillance processes and they used Minitab to analyze the data. We found Sue’s story an interesting case study for a LSS project, so I thought I would share it with you here on the blog, too.

Reducing Work Hours

When clients request classified video surveillance missions, the White Sands Missile...

In previous blog posts, I wrote about quality professional Bill Howell’s diabetes diagnosis and how he managed his disease with Lean Six Sigma. In Bill’s book, I Took Control: Effective Actions for a Diabetes Diagnosis, and later when I spoke with him personally, he mentioned the importance of Hemoglobin HbA1c in diagnosing diabetes and how informative this single blood component can be.

What is Hemoglobin HbA1c?

Hemoglobin HbA1c is a lab test that shows the average amount of sugar in blood cells over a 2-3 month period. The test can also be used to diagnose diabetes and can help diabetics...

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how fantasy football scores of quarterbacks have been rising the last six years. This led to the conclusion that you should draft an elite QB early in your draft. But, much like how you need to carefully consider all aspects of a process during a Six Sigma project, we now have to consider everything else that the quarterbacks can affect. Specifically, wide receivers and tight ends. After all, if QBs are throwing for more yards and touchdowns, somebody has to be catching those passes and getting more fantasy points.

Let’s use data and statistical softwareto see...

A few weeks ago, I used Minitab to calculate the odds of throwing a perfect game. The results were surprising. I found that the number of perfect games that have occurred since 1900 is vastly greater than the number we would have expected. And whether you're doing a six sigma project or a simple baseball data analysis, it's always good to go back and make sure you did everything correctly whenever you find surprising results.

To determine the number of perfect games we would have expected to occur since 1900, I calculated the probability of getting 27 outs in a row. To do this, I used the...

If you like baseball pitching statistics, then you've loved the month of June. On the first of the month, Johan Santana pitched the first no-hitter in Mets history. Then a week later, the Seattle Mariners used 6 different pitchers to do the same thing. That tied the MLB record for most pitchers used in a no-hitter. And finally, 5 days after that, Matt Cain pitched the 22nd perfect game in major league history. And we're only halfway through June! It doesn't take a Six Sigma Black Belt to realize it's been a crazy month.

But as a stat nerd, the question I have is how crazyhas June really been?...

I think it’s neat to find examples of Lean Six Sigma techniques in restaurants and stores when I’m out to eat or shopping. What started as a philosophy in the manufacturing world seems to be transcending into our everyday shopping experiences, and even into the products we choose to add to our carts.

Here’s a recap from my latest “Lean” shopping escapade:

I was recently in a grocery store snack aisle when I came across a bag of dark potato chips.

I thought this was a great use of a snack manufacturer taking what is usually considered a defect and turning it into a source of revenue. Of course...

Like a lot of people who need to analyze data for their work, I am not an expert statistician. Over the years I've acquired a fair amount of knowledge and experience, but mainly enough to make me appreciate more than ever the value of statistical software in making data analysis an accessible tool.   And I've discovered over and over again how quickly specific statistics skills can get rusty if you haven't used them for a while.    Statistical details in any type of analysis, whether it's scientific research or a Lean Six Sigma project, can be a real challenge. Where do you turn when you’ve...

My 6-year-old came home from school one day very excited to let me know that Maggie’s mommy was a doctor and she helped sick people get better. Seems Maggie's mommy was a “community hero.”

My unspoken response: “Not Maggie’s mommy again.” 

You see, in preschool, Maggie’s mommy remembered to send not one, but two rocks on “paint a rock” day.  I, sadly, forgot to send even a single rock. My daughter, without a rock, had to paint her clenched fist.

But I digress. Maggie’s mommy was, in fact, a wonderful doctor and very dear friend.  My spoken response was, “You are so right — we are so lucky to have...

Probability is the heart and soul of statistics: at a very simple level, we collect data about something we wish to understand, then we use statistics to assess the likelihood—or probability—of the situation described by the data. 

In practice, this simple idea gets complicated very quickly. Anyone who's been involved in a 6 Sigma project can confirm that sometimes the data we collect, and the results of our statistical analyses, seem far from simple. 
 

Trying to understand probability? Be sure to use fair dice. The fuzzy ones won't work so well!Nevertheless, probability is the mathematical...

I’m no 6 Sigma Samurai, but I aspire to be one someday. To help me, I enlisted the assistance of Minitab’s online statistics training course—Quality Trainer.

When I first came to Minitab a little over a year ago, I had little experience with statistics. While I had taken a few basic statistics courses in college, I definitely knew I needed a refresher course. I turned to Quality Trainer daily for those first few months of my employment and I continue to regularly consult Trainer when I’m writing about statistical concepts and need clarification.

 

What’s neat about Quality Trainer:

- Trainer is...

Another thing you may notice when performing a Capability Analysis in Minitab is the option to change whether you want to see capability statistics (Cp, Pp…) or Z.Bench.  From Minitab Help:
  
“A disadvantage of the Cpk index is that it only represents one side of the process curve, and tells you nothing about the other extreme. For example, the two graphs below display processes with identical Cpk values. However, one violates both specification limits, and the other only violates the lower specification limit...”
  

  
The Z in Z.Bench refers to the standard normal distribution with mean 0...

People like to say that seeing is believing, but the fact is that sometimes simply “seeing” isn’t enough. Whenever you’re making important decisions, like during a Lean Six Sigma project, it’s important to take a close look at the data. Because if you don’t, sometimes seeing is deceiving!

Consider college basketball. Since 1990, the team ranked #1 in the AP preseason poll  has won the national championship twice as often as the team ranked #1 in the final regular season poll. So after "seeing" every college basketball game, the voters opinion of the best team in the country gets worse!

Part of...

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the "perfect" proportion. We’re adding a sunroom to our house and debating the best dimensions for the rectangular addition. Naturally, "the golden ratio" is an enticing option.

Also called the Divine Proportion, the golden ratio has gotten a lot of buzz over the centuries. Its basis is simple yet profound.

Take a line segment and divide it into two segments so that the ratio of the longer segment (B) to the shorter segment (C) is the same as the entire line segment (A) to the longer segment (B).

That ratio, which is [1 + sqrt (5)]/2, or roughly...

Whether we're talking about sports or the best way to improve a process through Lean Six Sigma, it's good practice to verify things you "know" with some data. Quick and easy data analysis sometimes reveals that what everyone took as common knowledge just isn't true.

On the other hand, looking at data also can confirm your suspicions.

For example, it's no secret that LeBron James didn't play well in the 2011 NBA Finals. He averaged only 17.8 points per game, almost a full 9 points less than his regular season average of 26.7. But is this difference statistically significant? After all, it was...

As I mentioned before, accurate instruments won’t yield good data if you haven’t answered three fundamental questions that should precede every measurement system analysis. Whether you're doing a 6 Sigma project, or data analysis in support of a research project or some other goal, you need to be careful about how, when and where you gather the data.

Here’s how I learned that lesson the hard way.

I was working on a longitudinal study to determine whether impacts from jumping would promote bone density increases. The study called for subjects to jump from a height of 24 inches a specified...