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Heretic Articles

ROI President Steve Ouellette writes a popular monthly article for Quality Digest's InsideSixSigma online newsletter. These articles humorously (and usefully) discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of how Six Sigma is implemented. You can access those articles here.

If you want to be notified via an RSS feed as new articles are published here, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the RSS Logo icon, or just click here.

Don’t Design the Experiment Until You Research the Process

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Applied research the smart way

Although we may use the define, measure, analyze, improve, control (DMAIC) mnemonic to help guide us through our problem solving, that doesn't really give us a lot of specific direction (as I bemoan in my Top 10 Stupid Six Sigma Tricks No. 4). Good experimental design technique is critical to being able to turn problems into solutions, and in my experience Black Belts have not been introduced to a good process to do this. If you know someone whose first thought is, "Let's go collect some data to see what is going on," then read on to avoid losing millions of dollars in experimental mistakes.

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The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

Thursday, 03 March 2011 00:00 Steven Ouellette
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There is real competitive danger to a one-size-fits-all approach to specifications

"Come and listen to a story ‘bout a man named Ned / a poor Texas Sharpshooter barely kept his family fed. Then one day he was shootin’ at his barn / and he came up with a plan to spin a silly yarn. ‘Specifications,’ he said, ‘making of… the easy way.’ ” What do a Texas sharpshooter and specifications have to do with each other? And what do you do when your humble author has an old TV show theme song stuck in his head? Let’s find out…

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Not Another Toyota Article!

Thursday, 10 February 2011 10:09 Steven Ouellette
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The better your reputation for quality, the more you get slammed from an adverse even

With the announcement of another Toyota recall, it seems that everyone and their dog have an opinion about Toyota, and some of them might even be drawing the right conclusions. While everyone is allowed to have opinions (not the dogs—on quality matters I don't trust entities that consider cat poo a delicacy), it’s interesting to note that Toyota’s was not the biggest recall, not even the biggest in recent memory. So why do they get all the bad press—and what does it mean for quality?

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Statistical Correlation Does Not Always Prove Cause

Steven Ouellette
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Black Belt or not, common sense is quite rare

After my last column citing some really bizarre flaws in how our brains perceive reality, I thought I might cover some flaws in logic that are applicable in the world of quality. So, basically, even if our brains are working correctly, we can still send our Black Belts off on false trails trying to solve problems, thus offering more proof (as if we need it) for Voltaire’s observation that “common sense is quite rare.”

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Embracing Your Inner Geek

Thursday, 04 November 2010 14:49 Steven Ouellette
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Rules for statistical thinking

I know we have been talking about statistics a lot in my last few articles, but recent reader comments have prompted me to think more about why doing statistics properly matters. Come with me, dear reader, on a journey to find out why you should embrace, and not run screaming from, your inner statistical geek. But to get there, we have some interesting terrain to cover… starting with the human brain.

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Heretic Articles

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Unemployed in Colorado? Get state help for your Six Sigma training!

On October 15, 2010 The ROI Alliance (Six Sigma Online's parent company) became an approved provider of Six Sigma Black Belt and Master Black Belt training for Colorado's Workforce Investment Program (WIP), which helps people who are unemployed pay for the training they need to succeed in this competitive market place.  If you are looking for a job that is in high-demand, and you meet the requirements of the WIP, they may be able to help pay for your Six Sigma training!

 


Most Popular

Random Heresy

You know how sometimes you think everyone knows a secret that they haven’t let you in on? Well, I had the opposite happen to me the other day. I assumed everyone knew the purpose for measurement system analysis (MSA), a.k.a. gauge repeatability and reproducibility; but I found out that a number of people have a completely mistaken impression of what they are for, much less how to do them correctly. So I thought I would give away, (free of charge) articles that explain the basics of MSA, as well as a cool MSA spreadsheet to help you learn how to do them, just because that’s the kind of guy I am. Selfless. And humble. Yep.
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In the News

Six Sigma's lead instructor Steven Ouellette wrote an article with Dr. Jeffrey Luftig on "The Decline of Ethical Behavior in Business."

 

 

Six Sigma Online's lead instructor Steven Ouellette was profiled in the June 2008 issue of Quality Digest magazine. If you want to learn more about Steve's peculiar view of the world, as well as what he studied for a year in Europe, read the profile online.