7 BASIC QUALITY TOOLS FOR PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
Quality pros have many names for these seven basic tools of quality, first
emphasized by Kaoru Ishikawa, a professor of engineering at Tokyo University
and the father of “quality circles.”
Start your quality journey by mastering these tools, and you'll have a name for
them too: "indispensable."
1. Cause-and-effect diagram (also called Ishikawa or fishbone chart): Identifies
many possible causes for an effect or problem and sorts ideas into useful
categories.
2. Check sheet: A structured, prepared form for collecting and analyzing data; a
generic tool that can be adapted for a wide variety of purposes.
3. Control charts: Graphs used to study how a process changes over time.
4. Histogram: The most commonly used graph for showing frequency
distributions, or how often each different value in a set of data occurs.
5. Pareto chart: Shows on a bar graph which factors are more significant.
6. Scatter diagram: Graphs pairs of numerical data, one variable on each axis, to
look for a relationship.
7. Stratification: A technique that separates data gathered from a variety of sources
so that patterns can be seen (some lists replace “stratification” with “flowchart”
or “run chart”).
Cause-and-effect diagram. (“Fishbone” or Ishikawa diagram)
Cause–and–effect diagram
introduced by Kaoru
Ishikawa helps in identifying
the various causes (or factors)
leading to an effect (or problem)
and also helps in deriving
meaningful relationship between
them.
The very purpose of this diagram is to identify all root causes behind a problem.
Once a quality related problem is defined, the factors leading to the causal of the
problem are identified. We further keep identifying the sub factors leading to the
causal of identified factors till we are able to identify the root cause of the
problem. As a result we get a diagram with branches and sub branches of causal
factors resembling to a fish bone diagram.
Check sheet (Tally Sheet)
A check sheet can be metrics, structured
table or form for collecting data and
analysing them. When the information
collected is quantitative in nature, the
check sheet can also be called as tally
sheet.
The very purpose of checklist is to list
down the important checkpoints or events
in a tabular/metrics format and keep on updating or marking the status on their
occurrence which helps in understanding the progress, defect patterns and even
causes for defects.
Control Chart (Shewhart Chart)
Control chart is also called as Shewhart Chart named after Walter A.
Shewhart is basically a statistical chart which helps in determining if an
industrial process is within control and capable to meet the customer defined
specification limits.
The very purpose of control chart
is to determine if the process is
stable and capable within current
conditions.
In Control Chart, data are plotted
against time in X-axis. Control
chart will always have a central
line (average or mean), an upper
line for the upper control limit and
a lower line for the lower control limit. These lines are determined from historical
data.
Control chart helps in predicting process performance, understand the
various production patterns and study how a process changes or shifts from
normally specified control limits over a period of time.
Histogram
Histogram introduced by Karl Pearson is a bar graph representing the
frequency distribution on each bars.
The very purpose of Histogram
is to study the density of data in
any given distribution and
understand the factors or data
that repeat more often.
Histogram helps in
prioritizing factors and
identify which are the
areas that needs utmost
attention immediately.
Pareto chart (80 – 20 Rule)
Pareto chart is named after Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto chart revolves around the
concept of 80-20 rule which underlines that in any process, 80% of problem
or failure is just caused by 20% of few major factors which are often referred
as Vital Few, whereas remaining 20% of problem or failure is caused by 80%
of many minor factors which are also referred as Trivial Many.
The very purpose of Pareto Chart is to
highlight the most important factors
that is the reason for major cause of
problem or failure.
Pareto chart is having bars
graphs and line graphs where
individual factors are
represented by a bar graph in
descending order of their impact and the cumulative total is shown by a line
graph.
Pareto charts help experts in following ways:
Distinguish between vital few and trivial many.
Displays relative importance of causes of a problem.
Helps to focus on causes that will have the greatest impact when solved.
Scatter diagram
Scatter diagram or scatter plot is basically a statistical tool that depicts
dependent variables on Y – Axis and Independent Variable on X – axis
plotted as dots on their common intersection points. Joining these dots can
highlight any existing relationship among these variables or an equation in
format Y = F(X) + C, where is C is an arbitrary constant.
Very purpose of scatter Diagram is to establish a relationship between problem (overall
effect) and causes that are affecting.
The relationship can be linear,
curvilinear, exponential,
logarithmic, quadratic,
polynomial etc. Stronger the
correlation, stronger the
relationship will hold true. The
variables can be positively or
negatively related defined by the
slope of equation derived from
the scatter diagram.
Stratification (Divide and Conquer)
Stratification is a method of dividing data into sub–categories and classify
data based on group, division, class or levels that helps in deriving
meaningful information to understand an existing problem.
The very purpose of Stratification is to divide the data and conquer the meaning full
Information to solve a problem.
Un–stratified data (An employee reached late to office on following dates)
5-Jan, 12-Jan,13-Jan, 19-Jan, 21-Jan, 26-Jan,27-Jan
Stratified data: (Same data classified by day of the week )
