Part III: Assessing Performance

indeed, the amount of variation that’s showing up in a control chart. Even if

you appear to see a difference, you may need to know how different your difference
is. You may want to determine whether the differences are ‘real’ or
just natural variation.
So, you need to decide whether the data has come from the same population
or a different population. Possibly, the sample represents the future population
to come. You need to determine if the data are really different – fortunately,
you can use a hypothesis test to help you find out.
Hypothesis testing helps you find out if a statistically significant difference
exists or not. This chapter provides only a brief overview of the tests, which
are well supported by software programs such as Minitab or JMP, for example.
Check out the Minitab or JMP websites for more details about hypothesis
testing.
Creating two hypotheses for your tests, the null hypothesis and the alternate
hypothesis, is the first step. The null hypothesis, usually expressed as H0, proposes
that no difference exists between the data. The alternate hypothesis, HA,
states a difference is evident. The alternative hypothesis is sometimes presented
as H1.
Hypothesis tests are different from control charts; they don’t look at ongoing
data, but rather take a sample at a point in time. Usually, a 95 per cent confidence
level is used, that is, you can be 95 per cent confident that the results
display either a statistical difference or they don’t.
Two hypothesis tests may be especially useful: the T-test and the ANOVA.
The T-test looks at two sets of data (as shown in Figure 7-16), and the ANOVA
considers three or more sets of data.
Figure 7-16:
Sometimes
the difference
is
clear.
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
50
12
Number of days to issue
customer orders for team A
Number of occurrences
3 4 5 6 7 8 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
25
20
15
10
5
0
Number of days to issue
customer orders for team B
Number ofa control chart in Figure 7-3.

Analysing What’s Affecting

Performance

In This Chapter

▶ Finding out what’s at fault

▶ Using data to prove the point

▶ Introducing the maths of Lean Six Sigma

hether you manage a day-to-day operation or are involved in a DMAIC

(Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control) improvement project,

you need to understand what factors can affect performance, especially

if you encounter problems in meeting your customers’ requirements. In this

chapter, we introduce a selection of tools and techniques to help you identify

the ‘guilty parties’. We focus on how and how well the work gets done – the

process and the data.

Unearthing the Usual Suspects

If you’ve seen the Oscar-winning film The Usual Suspects, you may remember

its false trails and red herrings. Not until the closing scenes do you find out

just who the guilty person is. Many of the usual suspects are innocent – just

like in real life and in your search for the root causes of problems in your

process.

People often jump to conclusions about the possible causes of problems. In

many organisations, managers seem to ‘know’ for sure what the causes are;

usually, however, a whole range of suspects influence performance and affect

your ability to meet customers’ CTQs (Critical To Quality) – but chances are

only a vital few are actually ‘guilty’. Consider the following fishy tale: