The Lean methodology, developed by Taiichi Ohno, is built on a foundation of 7 principles of Lean that are designed to increase efficiency, reduce waste, and improve overall quality. These 7 principles of Lean form the foundation of this methodology and are essential to understanding the origins of TPS (Toyota Production System) and Lean. In my last post, I spoke about the origin of Lean and its evolution into what it is today. Hope you went through the same. If not, please click here to read the same (opens in a new tab). It gives the background to these 7 principles of Lean and understand wh ..read more

I get lot many questions on lean definition and the origin and history of Lean manufacturing? What is lean manufacturing? Where can we trace the origin of Lean manufacturing and who is the father of Lean production? Lean is a management philosophy that emphasizes on maximizing efficiency and minimizing waste in an organization. It is based on the principles of the Toyota Production System, which was developed by Taiichi Ohno in the 1950s and 1960s. It is a set of techniques that organizations use to improve their performance and efficiency. In this blog post, I will provide a detailed overview ..read more

In this post, we will talk about Nominal Group Technique, commonly referred to as NGT. Nominal Group Technique is a structured method of brainstorming, where the participants come with ideas on their own rather than as a group. And then, the group collectively evaluates, ranks them according to their importance and agree upon these generated ideas. We will look at what Nominal Group Technique is, when and how to perform nominal group technique, its advantages and disadvantages as well as a few examples where this technique can be used. Nominal Group Technique – An alternative to traditional br ..read more

You can completely represent a data set by two key values, the measure of central tendency and measure of variation. You need both these measures to portray the true nature of the data. In this post, we will look at what Variation means and what are the different measures of variation. Read on! Statistical Measures of Central Tendency and Variation In the previous post, we discussed the measures of central tendency in details. We also spoke about what central tendency is and which measures you should use in what scenario. (Click on the link to read the post, opens in a new tab) In this post, w ..read more

Normal Distribution, also called Gaussian distribution, is arguably the most important distribution from a statistical analysis perspective. As a Lean Six Sigma practitioner, one needs to understand this distribution, its characteristics and applications in the projects. We will look at all the details pertaining to Normal distribution and its application in Lean Six Sigma. Read on! In the last posts, we discussed basic probability concepts and Probability distributions at length. We spoke about discrete and continuous probability distributions. We also looked at histograms and how to build th ..read more

In this post, we will look at what Probability is and its application in Lean Six Sigma context. We will also talk about discrete and continuous Probability Distribution and look at their characteristics. Before we delve into probability distribution, lets take a quick view of basic Probability concept in general. What is Probability? You must have encountered multiple instances when you roll a dice or flip a coin. We know that the result of flipping a coin will either be a heads or a tail. That of rolling a dice is any number between 1 and 6, both included. Simply put, Probability is the chan ..read more

Histogram is a graphical analysis tool used to identify the shape of the data. In this post, we will discuss various characteristics of a histogram, how to identify shape or distribution of your data set using histogram and how plot a histogram using Minitab as well as excel. What is a Histogram? Histogram is a graphical analysis tool. In simple words, it is a bar chart representing your complete data set. However, this bar chart does not plot the data values from your data set. It rather plots the frequency, or number of time a particular data value is present in the data set, segregated into ..read more

Identifying Data type for project metric sometimes can be confusing. In this post, we discuss how to identify data type for your Lean Six Sigma project metric. And more importantly, what mistakes to avoid. Before we start talking about the data type of your project metric, we need to understand base and derived metrics. It is also important to understand common pitfalls and best practices for identifying and defining your project metric. Please read through my detailed post on Project Metric here and on Data Types here (opens in new tab). Derived Metric Let us take a simple example. Your proje ..read more

Why is data type important? A Lean Six Sigma project will deal with a lot of data. The project owner needs to perform various tests on such data set. The statistical tests to be performed depends on the data type. Hence, its imperative to understand the data types for all the data sets you have for your project. Quick disclaimer, we will discuss the data types relevant to a Lean Six Sigma project and will restrict ourselves to this scope. You will find that there are multiple alternate ways to classify data into various types other than what in mentioned below. However, understanding the data ..read more

In this post, we will look at the step by step approach to perform Continuous Gage R&R. It is also referred to as Gage R&R. We will also explore the results of Continuous Gage R&R and how to interpret these results. In my earlier post, we looked at what Measurement System Variation means, how it can creep into your process data and what steps you should take to ensure that your data is free of such variation. We also looked at an overview of Measurement System Analysis (MSA). MSA is done to ensure that your measurement system is robust, precise and accurate. Ple ..read more