Home »
Blog » QI Macros » Page 25
Improvement Insights Blog
Latest "QI Macros" Posts
This month’s issue of Money Magazine discusses the 21 Most Valuable Career Skills. At the top of the list, statistical analysis increasing pay by 6.1%. Right behind statistical analysis is Data Mining at 5.1%. It’s incredibly easy to learn these two skills using QI Macros and Six Sigma.
Also on the list, Customer Service Metrics (4.3%). I have found that the written comments in customer service systems can be easily analyzed using the QI Macros Word Count tool to identify the most common type of call or complaint. Then simple root cause analysis can reduce or eliminate those calls.
Business analysis (3.8%) is easy with QI Macros Control Chart Dashboards.
Continue Reading "Most Valuable Career Skills"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, Lean, Manufacturing, QI Macros, Service, Six Sigma.
At this years American Society for Quality World Conference in Milwaukee, winning teams improvement projects were displayed in posters in the exhibit hall. As I did at IHI in December, I took a stroke tally of the types of tools used. Like IHI, the vast majority of tools were line and bar charts, which are the dumbest charts on the planet. Only a few teams out of 36 used control charts, Pareto charts, histograms or fishbones.
Shouldn’t quality improvement stories should be told with tools of quality, not simple line and bar charts? Shouldn’t we be using charts that went to college and took statistics?
Continue Reading "ASQ 2016 Quality Tool Usage in Poster Presentations"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, Manufacturing, QI Macros, Service, Six Sigma.
A customer called today confused about her data. She wanted to draw a control chart and thought the data might have a binomial or poisson distribution. She thought it was attribute data. She’d used the QI Macros Control Chart Wizard to create a control chart of her data and it chose an XmR chart. She wasn’t sure that was right. When I asked her what kind of data she had, she said, “write-offs”.
Write-offs are money, plain and simple. Money is variable (a.k.a. continuous or measured) data.
I explained that to her and suggested she stop worrying about what kind of distribution she has and just look at her data.
Continue Reading "Binomial, Poisson, Attribute, Continuous Data Control Chart Confusion"
Posted by Jay Arthur in QI Macros, Six Sigma.
Children seem to like the look of laundry detergent packets, so they eat them and go to the emergency room.
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is designed to ferret out these kinds of problems in advance.
Failure Mode: Someone (adult or child) mistakes them for candy and eats one.
Effects: Vomiting and even death
Could this simple analysis have prevented this problem before it got to market? Maybe.
Learn more at www.qimacros.com/lean-six-sigma-articles/fmea/
Continue Reading "Detergent Packets Poison FMEA"
Posted by Jay Arthur in QI Macros, Six Sigma.
Microsoft added a box and whisker plot to Excel 2016, but it’s not everything you might hope for. Here’s an Excel 2016 box and whisker plot:
You might notice that the whiskers have a crossbar on the end. It seems to have a spare “x” in the middle of each box and it’s a little hard to see where the median is. And there are unnecessary gridlines that are considered chartjunk. It does, however, show the outlier below the first box.
Here’s what the QI Macros Box and Whisker Plot looks like:
The whiskers are whiskers. The median is easily visible.
Continue Reading "What’s Wrong with the New Excel 2016’s Box and Whisker Plot?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Excel, QI Macros, Six Sigma, Statistics.
I first learned how to draw Pareto charts by hand using engineering paper if you can believe it. Our trainers were very specific about how they were to be drawn. One of the earliest references I can find is Kaoru Ishikawa’s Guide to Quality Control. Here’s the correct way to draw a Pareto chart using data from Ishikawa’s book:
The bars should be touching and the cumulative percentage line should go from corner to corner of the first bar.
Unfortunately, most Pareto charts drawn by computer look like the following one, bars not touching and cumulative line running out of the center of the top of the first bar.
Continue Reading "The Correct Way to Draw a Pareto Chart"
Posted by Jay Arthur in QI Macros, Six Sigma.
Customers invariably want three things from any supplier; they want you to be better, faster and cheaper that your competition and your past performance. It’s vital to find out what they want. Sometimes it’s as easy as asking: “What can we do better?” and then listening carefully to the response.
One way to figure out what customers want is to develop a voice of the customer (VOC) diagram and keep it updated.
Along the left-hand side are the customer’s requirements for better, faster and cheaper. The goal is to capture exactly what they say in their language. Then translate what they say into business changes that deliver on those requirements.
Continue Reading "What Do Customers Want?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in QI Macros, Six Sigma.
I have found that a high number of people have a fear of math. They seem to think that you are either born with math skills or you aren’t.
In the Jan/Feb 2016 Scientific American Mind, author Carol Dweck reviews the most recent research into The Remarkable Reach of Growth Mind-Sets.
One study by Kathy Liu Sun found that middle school math teachers that embraced growth mind-set but did not back it up with growth mind-set teaching methods such as emphasizing underlying concepts, giving feedback and giving students a chance to revise and resubmit their work caused their students to develop a fixed mind-set.
Continue Reading "Is a Fear of Math Stopping Your Six Sigma Projects?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in QI Macros, Six Sigma.
In his speech Sunday at IHI, Don Berwick called for everyone to “recommit to improvement science” (step 5 in ERA 3 of healthcare transformation).
He sounded annoyed with the lack of use of Lean Six Sigma tools and methodologies.
I understand his frustration. I was there in 2006 when he asked everyone to “pledge allegiance to science and evidence.”
Over the years, I’ve done a stroke tally of the quality tools used in IHI poster presentations.
I gave each poster one checkmark for each type of tool used.
Sadly, even with all of the emphasis on control charts, Pareto charts and other tools of quality, they are used rarely in poster presentations.
Continue Reading "IHI 2015 Poster Use of Quality Tools"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
At the ASQ Lean Six Sigma Conference, the QI Macros booth was right next to my biggest competitor–the big dog in the market (you know who they are). A guy comes up to me and says: “We bought 150 copies of their product (pointing to the booth next to me) and it was really expensive. I asked our Green Belts if they were using it and they said No, it’s too hard to use. What are they using; they said Excel.” He went on to say: “I’m thinking about getting the QI Macros because everyone is comfortable with Excel.”
And he wasn’t the only attendee who complained about the same issues: costs too much and too hard to use.
Continue Reading "Complex Statistical Software–a Barrier to Six Sigma"
Posted by Jay Arthur in QI Macros, Six Sigma.
