sigma fav Archives | Gemba Academy

Introducing the Gemba Academy School of Six Sigma

By Ron Pereira - January 30th, 2013

For the past 6 months I, along with my Gemba Academy colleagues, have been extremely busy developing what we now call the Gemba Academy School of Six Sigma. I’m obviously extremely biased… but I have to confess… I’m quite happy

5 Critical Control Chart Characteristics You May Not Be Aware Of

By Ron Pereira - September 25th, 2012

No matter if you call yourself a “lean practitioner” or “six sigma practitioner” or some combination of the two… one “tool” you should have a deep understanding of is the control chart. I’ve written about control charts

Calculating Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY)

By Ron Pereira - September 12th, 2007

One of the most powerful operational metrics I know of is Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY). It’s used to assess the “true” yield of a given process. This includes what we often call the “hidden factory” t

Explaining the Central Limit Theorem

By Ron Pereira - July 16th, 2007

If you hate statistics this post is for you. Why? Because it’s my intention to have you understand AND be in position to teach others one of the more complicated and misunderstood statistical concepts of our time – the central

How to apply the one sample t-test

By Ron Pereira - June 21st, 2007

Last night we discussed the history and background of the one sample t-test. As promised, tonight we will discuss how it is you actually use the slick little hypothesis test. At the end of this post is a free case study available f

How beer influenced statistics

By Ron Pereira - June 20th, 2007

Back in the early 1900s a certain W.S. Gosset, an Englishmen, was tasked with brewing better beer. Really, I’m being serious. Gosset was a bright man, with two degrees from Oxford, and was hired by Guinness to help them brew

5 Steps to Data Collection

By Ron Pereira - May 31st, 2007

In most Six Sigma training programs and text books you will hear about a 5 step data collection process. However, what they don’t tell you is that collecting data is tricky. Many people think they can simply run off and gra

Repetitions versus Replications

By Ron Pereira - May 8th, 2007

Many Lean & Six Sigma practitioners struggle to differentiate between a repetition and replication. Normally this confusion arises when dealing with Design of Experiments (DOE). Let’s use an example to explain the difference. Pai

Taguchi Index – Cpm

By Ron Pereira - April 16th, 2007

Last night we discussed the Taguchi Loss Function and how Taguchi methods are more concerned with hitting the target compared to more traditional methods that often focus on keeping our data between the upper and lower specification li

Taguchi Loss Function

By Ron Pereira - April 15th, 2007

Saying the words “Genichi Taguchi” to a hard core “western statistician” may get you some dirty looks. Actually, some of these crazy statisticians may want to strike you for saying this person’s name. Why the hate you

Span – GE’s Variation Weapon

By Ron Pereira - April 12th, 2007

GE is arguably one of the best examples of Six Sigma excellence today. An often heard phrase is, “Motorola invented Six Sigma and GE perfected it.”A slick “variation weapon” GE has developed is called Span. I have never worked

Explaining Cp and Cpk

By Ron Pereira - March 26th, 2007

When we speak about the capability of processes we often refer to a couple indices called Cp and Cpk. These two indices, used together, can tell us how capable our process is and whether or not we have a centering issue. For the math

Demystifying Design of Experiments

By Ron Pereira - March 19th, 2007

I love Design of Experiments (DOE). Over the years I have done my fair share of them – everything from simple 2^2 full factorial designs to your more complicated Response Surface Methodology designs. Tonight I want to start by explai

Regression – Part 3

By Ron Pereira - March 6th, 2007

This evening we will wrap up our discussion of regression. So far we have discussed what regression is and a few ways to determine whether our model is significant. Next up I want to discuss something called the least squares me

Hypothesis Testing

By Ron Pereira - February 27th, 2007

One of my favorite statistical tools is hypothesis testing. We can use hypothesis testing for many purposes. For example, we would use the popular 2-sample t-test when we have two samples of variable data and want to understand if they

Control Charts – Part 3

By Ron Pereira - January 31st, 2007

Hello friends! This is the 3rd and final installment of all you wanted to know about control charts but were afraid to ask. In part 1 of the series we talked about the history and purpose of control charts. In part 2 we discussed three

The Heated Law of Dispersion

By Ron Pereira - January 16th, 2007

One debate that often arises amongst my Six Sigma cohorts is when to use the standard deviation of a dataset and when we should use another measure of dispersion, namely the range. Descriptive Statistics Overview Let’s take a quick r

Process Mapping – Lean or Six Sigma Tool?

By Ron Pereira - January 16th, 2007

If someone walked up to your this morning at the coffee machine and asked you, “Is process mapping a Lean or Six Sigma tool?” what would you say? This may seem like a trivial question but I dare say it is not. Poka-Yoke is a Six S

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