Tips and Techniques for Statistics and Quality Improvement

Value stream mapping is a cornerstone of the Lean process improvement methodology, and also is a recognized tool used in Six Sigma. A value stream map illustrates the flow of materials and information as a product or service moves through a process. Creating a “current state” value stream map can help you identify waste and also makes it easier to envision an improved state for process in the future.

The abbreviation FMEA is short for Failure Modes and Effects Analysis. It's a tool that helps you look very carefully and systematically at exactly how and why things can go wrong, so you can do your best to prevent that from happening.

You now often see “Machine Learning” appearing along with “Big Data”, “AI” or “Internet of Things” in the discussion of the digital transformation of business.

Process validation is vital to the success of companies that manufacture pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, test kits and a variety of other biological products for people and animals. According to FDA guidelines, process validation is “the collection and evaluation of data, from the process design state through commercial production, which establishes scientific evidence that a process is capable of consistently...

Greg Kinsey, Vice President at Hitachi, reveals how creative uses of the DMAIC process with digital transformation are helping factories to unlock the next level of process improvement. Greg is speaking at November's Minitab Insights Europe Conferences event in Dublin. 

Choosing the correct linear regression model can be difficult. Trying to model it with only a sample doesn’t make it any easier. In this post, we'll review some common statistical methods for selecting models, complications you may face, and provide some practical advice for choosing the best regression model.

Healthcare has many data-rich opportunities which can be used to improve cycle times, customer satisfaction scores, wait times, capacity/throughput, and inventory. In honor of Healthcare Quality Week October 21-27, 2018, National Quality Month in the US in October and World Quality Month in November, we wanted to share this helpful how-to on value stream mapping, or VSM. Value stream mapping can help you map,...

Recently we shared the first part of our interview with Dr Rozzeta Dolah – you can read the first part here.

Greg Kinsey, Vice President at Hitachi, is the Keynote speaker at the new Minitab Insights Europe Conferences this year. The conference brings together data-driven leaders from across European manufacturing to explore the new strategies, methods and tools for innovation and performance. Learn why you need to hear Greg’s view on the Future of Operational Excellence – and how you can be part of it.

To celebrate Minitab’s support of the recent International Conference on Teaching Statistics in Kyoto, Japan, we sat down with Dr Rozzeta Dolah, whose career and work in statistics and engineering has taken her to her native Malaysia, to Japan and then the USA where she is currently working as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.