Improvement Insights Blog
Many People Fear Statistical Process Control (SPC)
Most people fear math and statistics. That fear prevents them from using SPC, even though it’s now easy. If you can type, you can do SPC.
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“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I recently found a reprint of one of Shewhart’s books which had a preface by W. Edwards Deming. Now, this was reprinted back in about 1970 and in it, Deming suggests that it may take the world 50 years to really grasp Shewhart’s brilliance and implement it.
“Well, it’s over 50 years later and except for in manufacturing, I don’t see it. I think that’s because a lot of people have a fear of Statistical Process Control… mainly because it’s called “Statistical Process Control”.
“All right, I’m changing the name. It’s “Smart Performance Charts.” They’re “smart;” they went to college and took statistics so that you don’t have to. You don’t need to know any of that stuff. And “process” is boring, so it’s “Smart Performance Charts.” It helps you improve your performance and it’s a smart tool to help you with that.
“And QI Macros make it so easy. We have fill-in-the-blank templates. You just type numbers into a column and you get a chart. And then you can look at the chart and determine what it’s doing. That’s too easy.
“You don’t need to be a statistician, a Black Belt, a Green Belt. You can be a “No Belt” and learn how to do that. So, let’s not be afraid of SPC because it’s just not hard anymore.
“When I started, I had to do it all with handheld calculators and I knew that would never work because we were terrible. Let’s embrace SPC, get the QI Macros, download our free 30-day trial if you don’t already have it, and start learning that you can learn SPC in minutes. Not weeks, months, years, days, whatever it is.
“It’s easy. It is so easy. And we’re more than happy to help you, during tech support windows. You just reach out to our support staff. Chat in. We’ll talk. All right? We’ll support you. I want you to succeed and grasp this and get through all these frustration barriers that I see out there.
“Stop using Excel line, bar, and pie charts from the last century. They won’t get you where you want to go.
“Let’s go out and improve something this week.”
