Is Foursquare the Next Social Media Craze?

In TAPUniversity’s Social and Professional Networking course, we explore LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, Blogging, and more. Now we may need to add Foursquare to that list. A recent CNN article suggests that Foursquare may be the next big social media service (http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/19/cashmore.foursquare/index.html). Foursquare allows users to share their locations with their friends while at the same… [Read more…]

N and n

Pop’s Popcorn Factory employs 1000 people. Management wants to know employee views on a number of topics such as whether they would prefer having underground parking built for them or a soda-fountain shop opened in the factory. They randomly chose a sample of 150 people from the list of 1000 employees to take a survey.… [Read more…]

Kitting

Four children are assembling gingerbread houses around their dining room table. Each child is making five houses so that the family has enough to give away as gifts to relatives. Rather than have each child run back to the kitchen every time they need a spoon or have each child try to find a certain… [Read more…]

Type I Errors and Type II Errors

One of the most common questions I get in our Six Sigma courses is how to understand the difference between Type I and Type II errors. I’ll offer an explanation and then describe how I personally remember which error is which. Type I and Type II errors are mistakes made when performing null hypothesis testing.… [Read more…]

NQM One Month Later

As I was reading about Six Sigma I ran into an unfamiliar acronym—NQM. I found that it stands for National Quality Month. I was curious about which month it was and hoped that it would be this month so I could write something well-timed to commemorate it. But it isn’t—NQM is October, so I just… [Read more…]

TGR & TGW

In the spirit of Thanksgiving being less than a week away, imagine hosting the traditional family meal at your home. Eager to impress the family, you have carefully written out specifications for each dish. You’ve made a rub for the turkey that contains a myriad of ingredients, and you’ve added sour cream to the mashed… [Read more…]

Exercise – Brain Connection: Core and Pillar Strength Training @ coachdavek.com

I've thoroughly enjoyed sharing about the Exercise - Brain Connection. It does pay dividends on your work performance and certification exam success! As I've dug deeper it's made sense to separate that into a different blog. So please check out www.coachdavek.com. Today I shared about a weak area for me - core and pillar strength. Please follow that blog as well!

Quality Circle

A Quality Circle is a small group of people with a leader that works together to suggest ideas for improving quality in their organization. The concept of the Quality Circle originated in Japan. An example of a Quality Circle would be five employees at Furry Friends Food, a pet food company, that meet every Tuesday… [Read more…]

Poll on Your Reaction to Difficult People

Working with Difficult People

Who hasn’t had to work with a difficult person at some point in their career? Would you like to hear people’s stories of being reprimanded for reporting accurate numbers, disciplined for wanting to take a few hours off to be with a dying father, and being demoted because it rained during the company picnic? These… [Read more…]

Central Tendency

How much time has Carl been spending test driving different cars? When describing the data collected on a given variable, whether it be a Six Sigma or other type of study, a measure of central tendency is often reported. The Mean, Median, and Mode are all measures of central tendency. Here is an example: Carl… [Read more…]

Instant Pudding

“Let’s put up some posters around the building stating that quality is our number one objective, and we’ll certainly have fewer defects and better productivity.” This is an example of Instant Pudding. We may want quality and productivity to improve easily and almost effortlessly, but in reality it takes knowledge and hard work. Rather than… [Read more…]

Null Hypothesis

Carl wants to know whether there is a difference in how fast men drive versus women. He’ll be using radar to clock the speed of every car that goes by for an hour and record whether the driver was a man or woman. In Null Hypothesis testing, the Null Hypothesis must be stated and the… [Read more…]

Demerit Chart

Lately there have been problems in sampled batches of cookies from Katy’s Cookie Factory with the wrong amount of chocolate chips in the cookies, the wrong kinds of chips, and even stale chips. She wants to use a control chart to display how many non-conformities there are in each batch. However, she considers stale chips… [Read more…]

3 MU

Muda, Muri, and Mura are three enemies to maintaining a lean six sigma process. Muda (waste), Muri (strain), and Mura (discrepancy) are Japanese words representing what should be eliminated in a process. Muda may take on many forms, such as unnecessary waiting, defects, over-production, and adding details that are unimportant to the customer. Muri focuses… [Read more…]

Full Factorial and Fractional Designs

Would almonds, pistachios, or peanuts taste best in the new ChocoNut Cookie being launched by Katy’s Cookie Factory? And should sugar or honey be used as a sweetener? There are two factors here—nut type and sweetener type. There are three levels of the nut factor (almonds, pistachios, and peanuts) and two levels of the sweetener… [Read more…]

The 5 S’s

The waffle maker sits on the counter, and Katy doesn’t even like waffles. Flour dusts the counter and floors, and she can barely reach the brown sugar on the top shelf that she used almost everyday. Katy’s kitchen is a complete mess so she decides to apply the 5 S’s. The 5 S’s method promotes… [Read more…]

Critical-to-Quality Requirements

Katy has been gathering data on the Voice of the Customer to guide her organization in developing a new line of cookies. She hires a company to survey 10,000 people on their cookie preferences. Gathering and organizing data about customer needs leads to Critical-to-Quality requirements (CTQ). These are the quality parameters of the product or… [Read more…]