Six Sigma

The New Savior of the Free World – MVT

By Ron Updated on July 12th, 2007

Matt, a reader of this blog, sent me this article tonight and while I was not going to comment until I studied this more I decided what the heck… tap dancing makes for boring blogs. I’m letting it fly!A company that calls itself Qualpro is touting a methodology called MVT (Multivariable Testing). The claims of this company, per this article at least, are that all Six Sigma will do is make your company stock sink. They demonstrate as their evidence how GE, Home Depot, and few others have not had bullish stocks of late.

Contrarily, they state that all you must do to understand how superior MVT is to take a look at Lowe’s and some company called Superior Essex who makes something electrical. I take their word on it as I have never heard of Superior Essex.

So I am left to assume that the nice people at Qualpro are waiting for our calls. And, of course, once we do call them and write some checks and get some training that is much simpler then Six Sigma the stocks of our companies will rocket.

Sounds nice but I ain’t buying it. Come on people! Give me a freaking break. This is the type of crap that gives continuous improvement a bad name and makes me want to puke all over this keyboard.

Anyhow, judging a methodology by stock price is stupid if you ask me. Uh, yeah, GE is a terrible company and boy if they would just learn MVT all their troubles would go away. And Toyota… oh my… if those guys could just look up past their Kanban for a minute or two and notice MVT they would be so much better too. Give me another freaking break please.

To be fair, this MVT stuff may be OK. The guys over at iSixSigma were talking about it a few months ago. The little I have read about it seems interesting enough. Nothing extraordinary though and if I want to get a better feel I will read a book and two and give it a whirl. As readers of this blog likely know, I am open to learn anything if it moves my company further. But this chicken sh*t “marketing by bashing others” is ridiculous and ticks me off in case you hadn’t noticed.

Until next time, I wish you all (even the nice people at Qualpro) the best of luck on your journey towards continuous improvement.


  1. Black Belt

    February 23, 2007 - 9:40 am
    Reply

    Way to stick it to Qualpro. Lately they’ve been getting as much publicity as Brittany Spears.

    Thanks for speaking up Ron. Someone surely should defend Six Sigma from the evil forces of the MVT Six Sigma bashers.

  2. Ron Pereira

    February 23, 2007 - 12:46 pm
    Reply

    Thanks for the comment BB. This morning when I woke up I thought that maybe I had been a little harsh. Then I had some coffee and thought… nahhh… I was fine.

  3. murrayd

    March 9, 2010 - 8:51 am
    Reply

    MVT Response:
    Fear not Ron. If MVT has any merit it too shall be assimilated into Six Sigma (or its functional derivative). Excuse my blaspheme, but Six Sigma is a discipline parasite itself. Long before there was Six Sigma there was Quality Engineering, Industrial Statistics and Business Management. All of the greatest concepts of each discipline have been consumed by the Six Sigma philosophy. This is the evolution of business science and resistance is futile. I am not defending MVTs propaganda but all scientific models must be tested (even Six Sigma). So let time be the judge and don’t waste a keyboard in the process.

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