Tips and Techniques for Statistics and Quality Improvement

Imagine your new car breaks down after driving 60 miles. The engine light turns on and your vehicle must now be towed to be serviced. This is not only a warranty issue but also a field problem due to lack of product reliability.

Reliability is defined as the quality of a product over time and statistically speaking it is the probability of a product not to fail during a defined period of time.

When the data science buzz began around a decade ago, creating a predictive model was complicated work that only skilled programmers could accomplish. Today, new tools and new techniques are shifting the focus from programming details to building models that are robust, scalable and focused on creating business value.

Most people who have taken a statistics class, whether it be Six Sigma or a college course or elsewhere, learned about the assumptions from which each test was developed. And boy are there a lot of assumptions!

Chances are a rather large and complicated flowchart was presented to help students navigate to the right hypothesis test – in my original course the chart was so big it had to be printed on 11x17...

Falk Huettman is a professor of wildlife ecology at the Institute of Arctic Biology, Biology and Wildlife Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He uses machine learning extensively in his research.

How accurate is the location of an endangered Aleutian shield-fern specimen collected in Alaska in 1982? Research institutions and museums seek to provide the most accurate data possible to record the past and ...

Bill Kahn runs the statistical modeling group for consumer banking at Bank of America. His team builds hundreds of models using a broad range of statistical and machine learning techniques. These models help ensure financial stability for individuals, enterprises, and communities throughout the country. Over the past few decades, Bill has led statistics groups at several Fortune 500 financial service, consulting, and...

As a Technical Leader and Manager in Ford Motor Company’s Global Data Insights and Analytics organization, Bob Thomas is responsible for supporting data-driven analytic solution development that produces business, product and manufacturing insights.

Adam Russell is a Global Operations Master Black Belt, Tate & Lyle.

Tate & Lyle deploys Continuous Improvement (CI) tools, including Minitab and Salford Predictive Modeler (SPM), to address challenging engineering and manufacturing problems. Our company operates large-scale, continuous flow processes serving the Food & Beverage industry.

Different organizations teach statistics to their Six Sigma Belts at significantly different levels of scope and depth. I have seen many Master Black Belts (MBBs) who were highly qualified practical statisticians and a few who did not know the difference between a 2-sample t-test and a paired t-test. Black Belts (BBs) in general are taught statistics at a less intensive level, because they can lean on their MBBs for...

Wildfires in California have killed at least 40 people and burned more than 217,000 acres in the past few weeks. Nearly 8,000 firefighters are trying to contain the blazes with the aid of more than 800 firetrucks, 70 helicopters and 30 planes.

by Matthew Barsalou, guest blogger