People hate statistics, you probably do too?
Why?

Maybe you think they are not important to you, maybe you think they are boring or maybe you think there hard to learn, etc….

We all use statistics every day, in all facets of our lives. We use them at home, we use them when we are having fun.

Using statistics can save us a lot of money. When you decide to buy anything, you need/use some statistics. When buying a house for example, you want to the average price of houses in the area. This helps you know how much you should pay.

Your kids use statistics, too. You may tell them not to touch the chocolate ice cream you bought for dessert, but they may ask themselves “What are the chances of getting into trouble if we eat ice cream now? They will use a statistic to decide on what to do.

Most commonly, statistics are used in sports. Take hockey for example, they keep statistics on everything: goals, assists, wins, losses, ties, goals against, save percentage, powerplay percentage, penalty minutes, etc… These are all statistics. We use them to follow our favorite team, gamble, etc…

You can see that we need statistics in all of those area. It only makes sense that we use statistics in our work, too. Statistics can help us improve quality, they can help us get more done.

By using statistics, we can do better by working smarter.

SPC is a system of keeping records of how our process works; whether its getting better or worse.
These records are most easily digested and visible on charts. Without the charts we cannot appreciate the trends or past history of our results.

Therefore, without the past history displayed before us conveniently, its all too easy to assume the future production or process outputs will be the same or better than in the past. SPC helps us make better decisions.

SPC will be the key to your success.

Shigeo Shingo was one of the industrial engineers at Toyota who has been credited with creating and formalizing Zero Quality Control (ZQC), an approach to quality management that relies heavily on the use of poka-yoke (pronounced POH-kah YOH-kay) devices.

Poka-yoke is Japanese for mistake-proofing. These devices are used either to prevent the special causes that result in defects, or to inexpensively inspect each item that is produced to determine whether it is acceptable or defective.

A poka-yoke device is any mechanism that either prevents a mistake from being made or makes the mistake obvious at a glance. The ability to find mistakes at a glance is essential because, as Shingo writes, "The causes of defects lie in worker errors, and defects are the results of neglecting those errors. It follows that mistakes will not turn into defects if worker errors are discovered and eliminated beforehand. He later continues that "Defects arise because errors are made; the two have a cause-and-effect relationship. ... Yet errors will not turn into defects if feedback and action take place at the error stage". We suspect that Shingo and Deming would have a protracted discussion about whether workers or management are responsible for defects. No resolution of that issue is undertaken here.

An example cited by Shingo early in the development of poka-yoke shows how finding mistakes at a glance helps to avoid defects. Suppose a worker must assemble a device that has two push-buttons. A spring must be put under each button. Sometimes a worker will forget to put the spring under the button and a defect occurs. A simple poka-yoke device to eliminate this problem was developed. The worker counts out two springs from a bin and places them in a small dish. After assembly is complete, if a spring remains in the dish, an error has occurred. The operator knows a spring has been omitted and can correct the omission immediately. The cost of this inspection (looking at the dish) is minimal, yet it effectively functions as a form of inspection. The cost of rework at this point is also minimal, although the preferred outcome is still to find the dish empty at the end of assembly and to avoid rework even when its cost is small. This example also demonstrates that poka-yoke performs well when corrective action involves trying to eliminate oversights and omissions. In such cases, poka-yoke devices are often an effective alternative to demands for greater worker diligence and exhortations to "be more careful."

Shingo identified three different types of inspection: judgment inspection, informative inspection, and source inspection. Judgment inspection involves sorting the defects out of the acceptable product, sometimes referred to as "inspecting in quality." Shingo agreed with the consensus in modern quality control that "inspecting in quality" is not an effective quality management approach, and cautioned against it.