2013: International Year of Statistics

2013 is the International Year of Statistics. More than 1,200 organizations, professional statistical societies, colleges and universities, primary and secondary schools, businesses, government entities, and research institutes are participating in this worldwide event. Click to read more >>

Box Plot

Box Plot provides an intuitive graphical representation of the five number summary of a dataset. The five number summary consists of Minimum, Q1, Q2 or Median, Q3, and Maximum of a dataset. John W. Tukey introduced the concept of Box Plot in his book Exploratory Data Analysis, published in 1977. It is also referred as Box & Whisker Plot. Click to read more >>

Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive Statistics is one of the simplest techniques used in quality management to obtain a meaningful insight into the data being analyzed. Click to read more >>

Online Tools at Discover 6 Sigma Lab

These tools are retiring soon and will be moved to archives.

1. BRAINSTORMING and AFFINITY for ideation.
2. SIPOC to define processes at high level.
3. PARETO CHART for discovering the vital few using 80/20 rule.

Why 6 Sigma?

Six Sigma delivers business excellence, improves profits, delights customers and increases entry barrier for competition. The benefits from Six Sigma are indeed significant. Here are some leading business examples from GE, 3M and DuPont that highlight the benefits. Click to read more >>

Introduction to Six Sigma

Six Sigma is usually related to the magic number of 3.4 defects per million opportunities. It is beyond that. It is about being customer-centric. Every customer always values consistent and predicable services and/or products with near zero defects. Therefore they experience the variation and not the mean. Mean is their expectation or our target for performance. Six Sigma is a methodology to manage process variations that cause defects, defined as unacceptable deviation from the mean or target; and to systematically work towards managing variation to eliminate those defects. Click to read more >>

A few words on Quality

Some of the popular dictionary meanings of quality are "a distinguishing characteristic" and "degree of excellence". Customers do not look for quality in isolation. It is always a combination of quality and cost. In other words the "value" of product or service. Value may be defined as ratio of quality to cost. Click to read more >>

Variation & Defect

Variation is everywhere. It probably touches our lives more closely than any other thing! Variation is present in the output(s) of every process. The degree of variation or the distribution pattern of the output is a measure of process capability or maturity.Defect occurs when variation in a product or service goes beyond the acceptable limits. Click to read more >>

Processes are everywhere

Processes exist everywhere, from cosmos to planets to living beings. We can view every piece of work that we do as a process. But what is a process? Common dictionary meaning of process is "series of actions, changes, or functions bringing about a result". The performance of a process is defined as the inherent variability of a process in the absence of any special or assignable causes. It is a statistical indicator of how well a process is functioning i.e. running within its specified limits. Click to read more >>

About Breakthrough

Breakthrough improvements require breaking rules, experimenting, innovating, and inventing. It is all about thinking differently. Six Sigma is also about aiming at impossible and achieving it. Click to read more >>