{"id":8428,"date":"2026-08-25T01:00:59","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T07:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/?p=8428"},"modified":"2026-07-21T15:08:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T21:08:18","slug":"why-start-with-run-charts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/why-start-with-run-charts\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Start With Run Charts?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the last century, we trained people on run charts to prepare them for control charts. Why are we still doing it? What does it cost us?<\/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\/1207424229?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 class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#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;In the last century, calculating the center lines and control limits and everything for control charts was difficult. And so to make it simple, we started off with simply doing a center line, an average or median to get people used to the idea of calculating something. And then later on we would teach them how to calculate control limits.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Now let me ask you a question from the perspective of human behavior: If you teach somebody how to calculate an average and build a run chart until some point where they actually have 15 points where you could transition to a control chart, will they do it? Will they give up everything they know about run charts and run rules and all that other stuff to adopt a whole new thing that they don&#8217;t know?<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;No! All right. People won&#8217;t do it. From a Six Sigma perspective, that&#8217;s a waste of time, a waste of money, and a\u2026 you know, it&#8217;s just waste, period.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;So why not start with a control chart to begin with? \u201cWell, the limits aren&#8217;t going to matter until you get to 15 points.\u201d So what? At 15 points, you&#8217;ll have limits that start to matter. You know, you can just ignore them until then, right? And it&#8217;ll calculate an average. In the QI Macros, in our fill-in-the-blank templates, you just type in numbers and your chart will grow. And when you get to 15 or 20 points, you got enough stuff to make your control limits pretty accurate. If you want, you can then fix limits and just leave them that way. You can do a lot of things, but if you start with a run chart, you can&#8217;t do that, can you? No, you cannot.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;So, start with run charts&#8230; nah, let&#8217;s start with control charts, right? Start there. And when you get to 15 or 20 points, you have a control chart. It&#8217;s not a new thing. You can just keep going.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;All right, that&#8217;s my Improvement Insight. Let&#8217;s stop wasting time teaching people things they don&#8217;t need to know to do 21st century Quality Improvement. That&#8217;s dumb. Waste. Rework.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s go out and improve something this week.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the last century, we trained people on run charts to prepare them for control charts. Why are we still doing it? What does it cost us? 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[617,629,260],"class_list":["post-8428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-improvement-insights","tag-control-chart","tag-qimacros","tag-run-chart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8428","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=8428"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8470,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8428\/revisions\/8470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}