For providers like Riverview Hospital Association, serving Wisconsin Rapids, Wis. and surrounding areas, recent changes in the U.S. healthcare system have placed more emphasis on improving the quality of care and increasing patient satisfaction. “In this era of healthcare reform, it is even more essential for providers to have a systematic method to improve the way care is delivered,” says Christopher Spranger, director of Lean Six Sigma and Quality Improvement at Riverview Hospital Association. “We have had a Lean Six Sigma program in place for four years, and we are continuously working on...

We usually think of games as a distraction—just something we do for fun. However, growing evidence suggests that games can do much more, especially when it comes to learning in a classroom setting.

Because statistics is a topic that doesn’t come easily to most, using properly designed games to teach statistics can become a valuable tool to spark interest and help explain difficult concepts.

So what kinds of “properly designed” games are we talking about here? Not traditional board games like Monopoly or Chutes and Ladders, but interactive computer games—the types of games younger generations...

Human resources might not be a business area where you’d typically expect to conduct a Six Sigma project. However, Jeff Parks, Lean Six Sigma master black belt, found the opportunity to apply Six Sigma to human resources while leading quality improvement efforts at a large manufacturer of aerospace engine parts.

The manufacturer was suffering from high employee attrition, or turnover, and struggled to understand why. With a DMAIC Six Sigma project, Parks set out to work with the HR department to investigate and reduce the high turnover rates.

In 2009, the manufacturer had normal attrition rates...

Due to recent comments on this blog post (scroll down to view the comments section), I want to acknowledge that the definition of Lean in this post is incomplete. The goal of this post wasn't to offer definitions of Lean, Six Sigma, or any other methodology, but was rather to state that the focus of improvement efforts should be on using all the available tools, whether those be Lean or Six Sigma tools or both, to make the necessary improvements. Thank you to those who left comments and opinions. I appreciate your viewpoints and discussion on this topic. -Carly Barry

When I first started working...

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...

While value stream mapping, or VSM, is a key tool used in many Lean Six Sigma projects for manufacturing, it’s also widely used in healthcare.

Value stream mapping can help you map, visualize, and understand the flow of patients, materials (e.g., bags of screened blood or plasma), and information. The “value stream” is all of the actions required to complete a particular process, and the goal of VSM is to identify improvements that can be made to reduce waste (e.g., patient wait times).

How is VSM applied to healthcare?

When used within healthcare, one obvious application for VSM is mapping a...

Lean Six Sigma and process excellence leaders are often asked to “remove defects” from products and processes. This can be quite a challenge! Lou Johnson, senior Minitab technical trainer and mentor, has some tips that might help if you’re faced with this situation. I had the chance to talk with Lou, and here’s what he shared with me about how to first approach a DOE.

How to Approach a DOE

Before jumping into a Design of Experiment (DOE) for defect reduction, Lou suggests stepping back and thinking first about what issue is likely causing the problem. If you need help thinking about what might...

In the past couple of years, I've noticed a new acronym popping up across the Web. In case you've not yet encountered it, "FML" typically appears in social media updates about something gone awry.  As in, "The cat ate my homework. FML!"  Or, "My production line just broke down, and now the company is going to be short on a major order. FML!" 

This acronym reminds me of an abbreviation used in Lean Six Sigma and quality improvement: FMEA.  It's short for "Failure Modes and Effects Analysis," which basically means "look very, very carefully at how and why stuff can go wrong."

FMEA: Failure Modes...

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...

The Minitab Fan section of the Minitab blog is your chance to share with our readers! We always love to hear how you are using Minitab products for quality improvement projects, Lean Six Sigma initiatives, research and data analysis, and more. If our software has helped you, please share your Minitab story, too!

Growing up, I had little or no interest in math. In Africa we had little or no manufacturing; therefore, I had no idea about manufacturing processes, quality improvement, and so on. There was nothing there to motivate me play with numbers. I used to be terrified to see charts and...

The Minitab Fan section of the Minitab blog is your chance to share with our readers! We always love to hear how you are using Minitab products for quality improvement projects, Lean Six Sigma initiatives, research and data analysis, and more. If our software has helped you, please share your Minitab story, too!
 

When I was student at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), in Kolkata, India, my project had a requirement of accurate data analysis for some critical data.

My adviser suggested I use Minitab Statistical Softwarefor data analysis in that project, and since then I have used it for...

It’s common to think that process improvement initiatives are meant to cater only to manufacturing processes, simply because manufacturing is where Lean and Six Sigma began. However, many other industry segments, such as healthcare and banking, also rely on data analysis and Lean Six Sigma tools to improve processes (even if those processes are more service-based).

For example, it’s increasingly common for healthcare professionals to conduct projects to help them investigate and understand certain clinical outcomes for patients, such as the incidence of a certain disease developing after...

We tend to associate Six Sigma, Lean, TQM, and other quality improvement methods with industries like manufacturing. But using statistics and data analysis to solve problems is a process that's flexible enough to suit any business, including services such as banking, food service and, increasingly, health care. 

There are many reasons to be happy that Lean Six Sigma is being adopted by more and more health care practitioners, including hospitals, clinics, and individual physicians, not to mention pharmaceutical and medical device makers. 

Lean Six Sigma in Health Care

If any profession should...

The Minitab Fan section of the Minitab blog is your chance to share with our readers! We always love to hear how you are using Minitab products for quality improvement projects, Lean Six Sigma initiatives, research and data analysis, and more. If our software has helped you, please share your Minitab story, too!

Throughout my 15 years as a Six Sigma Initiative Leader, Consultant, Trainer, Black Belt and master Black Belt I have been enthusiastic about Minitab Statistical Software, starting from release 11 to now.

Minitab's graphics are outstanding in their ability to present messages and...

I recently had the chance to talk to Brett Warland, global director of process improvement at PolyOne Corporation. The word “global” is often present in the titles of many organization’s process improvement programs and employee job titles that deal with quality. This can convey not only an international emphasis on process improvement at worldwide branches of the company, but also that CI methods pervade each aspect of the business’s culture and day-to-day workings.

I definitely found this to be the case at PolyOne! Just a few minutes into our conversation, Brett mentioned that...

The Minitab Fan section of the Minitab blog is your chance to share with our readers! We always love to hear how you are using Minitab products for quality improvement projects, Lean Six Sigma initiatives, research and data analysis, and more. Today we learn how an avid gamer used design of experiments to boost his performance in his favorite driving game.

If our software has helped you, please share your Minitab story, too!
 

I've used Minitab Statistical Softwarepretty much every work day since being a Black Belt, but I've also used it at home. Back before the needs of family life took over,...

by Manikandan Jayakumar, guest blogger

In an earlier post, I discussed how to collect data in a Design of Experiments (DOE) to optimize the value of an attribute or categorical response (Pass/Fail, Accept/Reject, etc.).  I then showed how to convert the collected data into proportions and apply the arcsine transformation using built-in calculator in Minitab Statistical Software.    Now we’re ready to analyze the data to see what effect our three factors have on our attribute response! 

Initial Model and Interaction Plot of Attribute DOE Results

We’ll do this by choosing Stat > DOE > Factorial...

by Manikandan Jayakumar, guest blogger

We use Design of Experiments (DOE) to optimize the value of a response (Y) by simultaneously changing the values of several factors (X’s). The response will often be a continuous variable, but in some scenarios you need to optimize an attribute or categorical response (Pass/Fail, Accept/Reject, etc.). 

Collecting the Data for an Attribute Response DOE

Let’s see how we can use DOE to optimize an attribute response, using data from the manufacturing sector. We are looking at 3 factors with 2 levels each, which are coded as -1 and +1. The total number of...

In my blog post from about 3 weeks ago, I used the Solution Desirability Matrix in Quality Companion to simulate how Mitt Romney might choose his VP candidate. This past weekend, Mitt Romney ultimately chose Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin U.S. Representative. In this blog, I’ll take a look at how the previous analysis fared and see what we can learn from it.

At the time of my initial analysis, there were about 20 potential candidates and I included the top 12 in the matrix. The top 5 were:

• Tim Pawlenty
• Rob Portman
• Pat Toomey
• Paul Ryan
• Bobby Jindal

Paul Ryan came in at #4, and I’m actually pretty happy with...

The Minitab Fan section of the Minitab blog is your chance to share with our readers! We always love to hear how you are using Minitab products for quality improvement projects, Lean Six Sigma initiatives, research and data analysis, and more. If our software has helped you, please share your Minitab story, too!
 

Some years ago, my wife had a real issue with her blood pressure spiking for no apparent reason. The "high side" was up to 200/110 with the low side beyond 80. We were extremely concerned.

Her doctor tried several new medications and none worked—at all. Finally, we structured a...