Improvement Insights Blog

Control charts have been around for 100 years. Why isn’t everyone using them?

“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].

“I was at the American Society for Quality World Conference on Quality and Improvement and some guy came up to me and started wanting to argue with me about how you can’t use control charts for non-normal data. He was ranting about that… and by the way, Donald Wheeler has already answered that question: Yes you can; shut up. All right?

“But, you know, control charts have been around for 100 years. My problem is not worrying about non-normal data, my problem is I can’t get people to use control charts to track things. They’re still using line charts and bar charts… no! I’m sorry, grow up, come into this century, all right? It’s so easy to draw control charts with QI Macros, I don’t know why people are hesitating, right?

“I think everybody thinks everything’s too hard. Or they’ve tried a software and it was too complicated and they don’t want to learn another software that must be as complicated as that one. Not true. Select some data, click a button, get a chart: That’s QI Macros.

“Let’s honor the legacy of Shewhart, who invented this stuff, and let’s start using it to maintain, sustain and improve what we’re doing. Reduce defects, increase customer satisfaction so we can track it and prove to ourselves that we’re actually getting the results we want in a consistent stable fashion.

“That’s my Improvement Insight. Let’s go out and improve something this week… like how we chart stuff.”