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...

Should this doctor consult a regression model?

In a previous post, I wrote about how the field of statistics is more important now than ever before due to the modern deluge of data. Because you’re reading Minitab's statistical blog, I’ll assume that we’re in agreement that statistics allows you to use data to understand reality. However, I’d also bet that you’re picturing important but “typical” statistical studies, such as studies where Six Sigma analysts determine which factors affect product quality. Or perhaps medical studies, like determining the effectiveness of flu shots.

In this post,...

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...

The 2013 ASQ World Conference is taking place this week in Indianapolis, Indiana, and it's been a treat to see how our software was used in the projects highlighted in many of the presentations. As a supporter of the conference, a key event for quality practitioners around the world, Minitab was proud to sponsor one of the presentations that seemed to get a lot of attendees talking. Scott Sterbenz, a Six Sigma leader from Ford Motor Company, delivered a presentation entitled "Leveraging Designed Experiments for Success," which explained how to make designed experiments succeed with examples...

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...

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...

In statistics, we use a variety of intervals to characterize the results. The most well-known of these are confidence intervals. However, confidence intervals are not always appropriate. In this post, we’ll take a look at the different types of intervals that are available in Minitab, their characteristics, and when you should use them.

I’ll cover confidence intervals, prediction intervals, and tolerance intervals. Because tolerance intervals are the least-known, I’ll devote extra time to explaining how they work and when you’d want to use them.

What are Confidence Intervals?

A confidence...

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...

Earlier I wrote about four important questions you should ask if you're looking at using statistical software to analyze data in your organization, especially if you're hoping to improve quality using methods like Six Sigma. But there are other points to consider as well. If you're in market for statistical software, be sure to investigate these questions, too!

What Types of Statistical Analysis Will They Be Doing? 

The specific types of analysis you need to do could play a big part in determining the right statistical software for your organization. The American Statistical Association's softwa...

Data.  Analysis. Statistics. It seems like everybody is talking about the importance of doing data analysis, whether it's analytics for predicting consumer behavior or looking at critical metrics for Six Sigma and other data-driven quality improvement programs. Not only do we have more data available to us than ever before, we're also blessed...and/or cursed...with an enormous range of software options to help us make sense out of all this data we're trying so hard to understand. 

Your options for doing data analysis run the gamut—from a pencil, paper and calculator costing a couple of bucks...

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...

Whether you're a quality improvement veteran or you're just starting to do research about what quality improvement methods are available today, you've seen headlines and articles that explain why Six Sigma and other data-driven quality improvement methods don't work.

Typically these pieces have an attention-grabbing headline, like Six Sigma Initiative Fails to Save the Universe, followed by a dissection of a deployment or project that failed—usually in spectacular fashion—to achieve its goals. 

"There!" the writer typically crows. "See? It's obvious Six Sigma doesn't work!" What makes these...

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...

Want to learn more about analyzing data? Try taking a page from Aesop's book. 

Well...really, I'm suggesting taking multiple pages from Minitab's book, but my suggestion stems from an idea that Aesop epitomizes.  

Aesop was no fool. When he wanted to convey even the heaviest of lessons, he didn't waste time detailing the intellectual and philosophical arguments behind them. He didn't argue, cajole, or berate. He didn't lecture or pontificate. 

He told a story. 

Minitab uses the same approach in Meet Minitab, the introductory guide to data analysis and quality statistics using our statistical...

Serving cat food? I sure hope you've set your alpha
level high enough.

"Bad kitty!" That's a phrase you almost never hear, but even we cats make the occasional mistake. I was reminded of this recently as I watched my human trying to analyze some data. People frequently make mistakes when they test a hypothesis with data analysis. Specifically, they can make either Type I or Type II errors.   

When I first started reading my human's statistics textbooks a few years ago, this idea seemed awfully silly to me. We cats appreciate being direct, and you either get the answer correct or you don't. I...

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...

Marlowe the Stats Cat here. Earlier, I showed you how easy it was to set up my statistical software with a personalized menu of statistical tools I use most often. 

The problem is that I share a computer with one of the humans who live in my house, and the statistical tools I use most may not be the ones he needs to use. And I don't want to clutter myinterface with a "Human" menu.    I'm trying to be kind, but I should just be direct about this: as a cat, I have abilities that far oustrip those of my human. That extends to the range of statistical tools I can use effectively.   What I need to...

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...