Tag: SPC

For a long time, I've wanted to attend a "Statistical Process Control" (SPC) class taught by Donald J. Wheeler, Ph.D.  I'm finally doing this in September and I'd like to invite you to join me.

Last week, I saw a headline about a drop in NCAA college football attendance. I wasn't satisfied with the two data point comparisons or other written descriptions of the metrics. I wanted to see data. SHOW ME THE DATA, JERRY! (with apologies to "Jerry Maguire"). I wanted to see a chart. So, I found the data on to NCAA website and created "process behavior charts" that tell you much more about the data than text numbers ever could.

When managing a process and looking at results, the type of chart we use matters. The way we react to the chart matters too. In this blog post, I explore two different types of charts and explain why I like the "process behavior chart" format better.

Today's blog post -- it's not just about sports, it's about managing and measuring improvement...

As I've been writing about "process behavior charts" - a simple, yet effective method for charting and reacting to (or not overreacting to) metrics, it's made curious what some of the modern Toyota books say about metrics and performance measures.... or at least the first two in The Toyota Way series.

If you watched this year's World Series, you saw a lot of home runs. There were many dramatic home runs in late innings or...

I'm in San Francisco for Lean Startup Week. Please say hi if you're here! Follow hashtag #LeanStartupWeek for details the rest of the week....

  So many of our business metrics are reported in terms of two-data point comparisons. How much did the metric change from last week? Web...

I've been going through the book by the late Peter Scholtes: The Leader's Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done. His work builds upon the legendary W. Edwards Deming and Russell Ackoff, among others. I often quote Scholtes (something also attributed to Peter Senge and others) as saying: "People don't resist change, they resist being changed." I think that's very insightful and that thought has led me to study change management, "motivational interviewing" and other related topics. It turns out that having the right answer and pushing it on others isn't the best strategy for effecting sustainable change. I had to learn those lessons the hard way and I'm still learning.

Here's another post on the theme of performance metrics, as I'm talking about next week at Lean Startup Week (see yesterday's post or others...

As next week's Lean Startup Week approaches, I'm pretty laser focused on preparation for my: Facilitation of the famed Deming Red Bead Experiment My...

One of the phrases and concepts that I love from Eric Ries and The Lean Startup is the idea of "success theater," which describes the efforts...