{"id":7856,"date":"2025-10-07T01:00:53","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T07:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/?p=7856"},"modified":"2026-02-18T14:26:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T21:26:02","slug":"stop-using-excel-spaghetti-charts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/stop-using-excel-spaghetti-charts\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop Using Excel Spaghetti Charts"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>Stop Using Excel Spaghetti Charts. Start using Smart Performance Charts (SPC). Here&#8217;s how:<\/p>\r\n<p><em>Download my free ebook, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/pdf\/Agile-Process-Innovation.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Agile Process Innovation &#8211; Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1102267988?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>&#8220;Hi, I&#8217;m Jay Arthur, author of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Lean-Six-Sigma-Hospitals-Improving\/dp\/1259641082\/\">Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals<\/a>\u201d and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/demo\/\">QI Macros [software]<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;I was recently in a presentation, and a person was putting up line charts and there were multiple lines on each chart. I know charts and I was still having trouble following the presentation. This person acted like everybody in the room was getting everything that he said. Nonsense.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Nobody wants to read your &#8216;spaghetti chart.&#8217; That&#8217;s what I call them: spaghetti charts. Too many pieces of noodles running across the page. How do you separate them? If you can&#8217;t learn how to tell a story with one line, then it&#8217;s not a very good chart. All right, straight up. I just don&#8217;t think it is. And if you use <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/control-chart\/control-chart-types\/\">control charts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/Moneybelt\/pareto-chart.html\">Pareto charts<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/training\/videos\/histograms\/\">histograms<\/a>, it&#8217;s going to get clear really fast.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;So, that&#8217;s my Improvement Insight for this week: Stop using spaghetti charts. Start using Smart Performance Charts, control charts, Pareto charts, histograms to tell a clear story. Stop confusing your audience. Not good.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s go out and improve something this week.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stop Using Excel Spaghetti Charts. Start using Smart Performance Charts (SPC). Here&rsquo;s how: Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation &ndash; Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results. &#65279; &ldquo;Hi, I&rsquo;m Jay Arthur, author of &ldquo;Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals&rdquo; and QI Macros [software]. &ldquo;I was recently in a presentation, and a person was putting up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8175,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[168,642],"class_list":["post-7856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvement-insights","tag-qi-macros","tag-spaghetti-charts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7856"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8263,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856\/revisions\/8263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}