John Tukey, Unsung Man of Science

Author: Russ Aikman
Many of the core concepts of statistical and quality analysis were developed in the early to mid-20th century by a relatively small number of individuals including Ronald Fisher, Karl Pearson, Walter Shewhart, and W. Edwards Deming. Less well known is American mathematician and statistician John Wilder Tukey (1915-2000).
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Size of the Effect in Treating COVID-19

Author: Russ Aikman
With COVID-19 still causing thousands of deaths worldwide (over half a million as of this writing) the search for a vaccine and a treatment continues at hospitals around the globe. A breakthrough on treatment of some patients was announced back on June 16th when doctors at Oxford University posted research on the steroid dexamethasone.
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The Move Online for LSS

Since the start of 2020 TMAC staff have been very busy with Lean Six Sigma work including four different classes (two GBs, one BB, and one MBB), coaching of over 40 belts, preparing for the Lean & Six Sigma World conference, not to mention leading kaizen events and mapping sessions for various customers. Our schedule … Read more

Champion Roundtable Recap

Author: Russ Aikman
In January TMAC hosted our 4th Annual Lean Six Sigma Deployment Champion Roundtable. The Roundtable is a 1.5 day mini-conference focused on the goals, challenges, activities, and successes of individuals leading a Lean Six Sigma Program. At this year’s Roundtable we had representatives of 13 different companies.
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2019 Year in Review

Hard to believe but another year is almost gone. We’d like to share some of our activities and recognize those who helped make it such a fun, interesting, and productive year. January got off to a good start with the 3rd Annual LSS Champion Roundtable. We had 47 participants from 18 companies, some coming from … Read more

Stability vs. Disruption

Disruption is a very trendy word. Articles about disruptive products, technologies, and services are increasingly common in business magazines. This is especially true in some industries such as consumer electronics and entertainment. Recently I even saw a Linkedin profile of an individual who described himself as a ‘disruptive change agent’. Makes you wonder how he … Read more

Balancing Old and New

Earlier this month I attended two different conferences in which I got a glimpse of the future. The fi­­rst was the Minitab Insights Conference, held in Leesburg, VA (Oct 10-11). Many presenters covered topics that would be familiar to all Green Belts and Black Belts – Design of Experiments, Measurement System Analysis, and Sampling. Other … Read more

Process Capability: A Critical Management Tool (Part 3)

In the previous blogs we covered the basics of process capability and its use as a Management tool. Part 1 addressed process capability for continuous, normally distributed data. Part 2 covered Short Term vs. Long Term capability, plus capability analysis when the target is not centered between the spec limits. You can read those blogs … Read more

Getting Lean Right: 10 Factors for Success

Based on a Lean article written by Jamie Flinchbaugh Several years ago I came across an excellent article about deploying a Lean Program. Written by Jamie Flinchbaugh, co-author of The Hitchhikers Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road (2005), this article first came out in January 2004. Although it has been 15 years since he … Read more