Looking to improve quality & reduce costs?
ELIMINATING THE VIRUS OF VARIATION USING STATISTICAL PROCESS CONTROL & PROCESS BEHAVIOR CHARTS (CONTROL CHARTS) IS THE ANSWER!
“A phenomenon will be said to be controlled [predictable] when, through the use of past experience, we can predict, at least within limits, how the phenomenon will behave in the future.”
— Walter A. Shewhart, Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product
The virus of variation
The virus of variation, like its microorganism brethren, makes our processes and systems sick. Understanding how to at minimum mitigate the ailments caused by the virus of variation is quintessential to improving quality and reducing costs.
Articles of interest
Improvement is detective work
The term characterization tends to be bound to the world of literature. It tends to be bound to descriptions of people and places that inhabit the worlds of stories and fiction. Alas, the utility of characterization extends beyond the world of literature and into the world of process improvement.
Moby Dick & process characterization
Improving quality and reducing costs, like detective work, is a single job that has two parts. Understanding these parts and the way that they interface with each other is a quintessential skill that makes world-class quality not only possible but a reality.
“The job of a manager is to work on the system, to improve it, with the help of the workers.”
— Myron Tribus, The Germ Theory of Management