Yellow Belt - 05 - Basics - Quality Tools

Question 1

1. What is a Pareto Chart

Answer 1

1. It can be a bar chart or a pie chart.
2. Bars are sorted in descending order from left to right.
3. Bar height = frequency or impact.
4. Shows areas with the greatest impact
5. Shows the 20% of categories, causing 80% of problems (Pareto Rule)

Question 2

2. When to use a PARETO CHART

Answer 2

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1. Analysing frequency of problems or causes in a process
2. Focus on significant problems or causes.
3. When communicating with others about your data

Question 3

3. What are the components that make up a Pareto Chart?

Answer 3

1. The x-axis displays categorical / qualitative data
2. The X-axis reflect problem areas or causes of problems
3. The Y-axis is the numeric scale used to measure the categories.
4. The left Y-axis represents measures such as Frequency (how often), Quantity (how many), Cost and Time.
5. The Right Y-axis is used to measure Cumulative Percentages.
6. The percentage for each bar is the numeric measure captured for that category over the total numeric measures for all categories.
7. The cumulative percentage for a bar is that bars percentage plus all the percentages of the bar to the left of that bar.
8. This is represented by a dot on or above the bar in line with the percentage on the right-hand Y axis.
9. The 80% cut-off line help determine the 80/20 rule.
10. A horizontal or vertical line is added to the chart at the 80% cumulative percentage mark.

Question 4

4. How should a Pareto chart be read?

Answer 4

1. If the 80% cumulative line is horizontal, the dot that falls under the line represents the vital few categories.
2. If the 80% cumulative line is vertical, the dots to the left of the line represent the vital few categories.
3. The vital few are the priority areas for major improvements.

Question 5

5. At what phases are Pareto Charts used?

Answer 5

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1. Stages - Define/Measure/Analyse.

Question 6

6. What is a Cause and Affect Diagram

Answer 6

1. Visual mapping tool
2. Used for identifying causes of problems
3. Organize and categorise causes of problems
4. Called Ishikawa Diagram or fishbone diagram

Question 7

7. At what stages are a Cause and Affect Diagram used

Answer 7

1. Measure
2. Analyze

Question 8

8. What makes up a Cause and effect diagram

Answer 8

1. Problem statement ( what is being fixed or improved ).
2. One problem per cause and effect diagram.
3. The problem statement is the starting point (circled).
4. Add the ribs, which are the categories.
5. ask, “why does this happen.”
6. write the causes under the category,
7. and ask why the cause happens.
8. Write the sub-causes under the cause.
9. Challenge the team around the categories with small amounts of cuases.

Question 9

9. What are common categories used in a Cause and effect diagram

Answer 9

1. Measurements - tools, methods and data used to evaluate the quality of the process.
2. Materials - suppliers, Raw materials, manuals - Items that make up the final product.
3. Methods - Procedures, Methodologies, and techniques - used during a process
4. Environment - Culture, Political, social setting - related to the surrounding the process operates in
5. People - the individuals involved in the process.
6. Machines - machinery, tools and computers involved in the process.

Question 10

10. What is a flowchart

Answer 10

1. Visual Step-by-Step representation of a process.
2. A flowchart shows a process’s steps in sequential order.
3. Used in the Define, Measure and Improve stages

Question 11

11. When to use a Flowchart

Answer 11

1. When trying to understand a process.
2. When improving a process.
3. When showing others what a process is.
4. When documenting a process.
5. When planning a project

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Question 12

12. What do you need to create a flow chart?

Answer 12

1. Flipchart, Marker, and notes.
2. Once happy, use an app to create the final version (Visio)

Question 13

13. What is an Activity Flowchart?

Answer 13

1. Helps understand workflows.
2. Helps show activities and decision points.
3. Helps discover problems
4. Helps compare desired flows to real-world flows.
5. Helps to find ways to optimize workflows.

Question 14

14. What is a Deployment Flowchart / Swimlane Process Map

Answer 14

1. Helps shows interactions and handoffs between stakeholders or functional areas with swim lanes.
2. Helps Identify inefficiencies, duplication or unnecessary processing.
3. Helps see how sequential or parallel steps affect the processing time.

Question 15

15. What symbols are used in flow charts?

Answer 15

1. Direction
2. Decision
3. Delay
4. Document
5. Link
6. Input / Output
7. Step
8. Start/End

Question 16

17. What is a Run Chart?

Answer 16

1. Shows trends, patterns and variations in a process.
2. Shows how the process is running.
3. Shows process performance.

Question 17

18. When to use run charts?

Answer 17

1. When performing visual analysis of baseline, problem or solutions.
2. Used in Measure, Analyse and control phases

Question 18

19. What are the components that make up a Run chart?

Answer 18

1. Y-Axis: Contains the numeric date observed.
2. X-Xaxis: contains time, the time the numeric data was captured.
3. The average line represents the average for all the numeric data captured.
4. Dots (Data Points): A dot (Data Point) will be marked at the X and Y intersect for each time interval on the X axis, representing numeric data observed/captured.
5. A line connecting all the dots in time order, from left to right.

Question 19

20. What are Runs in a Run Charts?

Answer 19

1. Runs: count the number of times the line crosses the average line and add one to get the runs
2. Data points on the average line are not included, and their lines are ignored.
3. Too few or too many runs indicate areas to focus on
4. Use the Runs table to understand if the number of runs is ok.
5. The length of a run should not be longer than 8 data points on one side of the average line.

Question 20

21. What are Trends in Run Charts?

Answer 20

1. Trends are a series of consecutive points heading up or down.
2. Run chart with fewer than 20 data points should not have more than five data points.
3. Run charts with 20 to 100 data points should not have more than six data points in a row.
4. Use the Trend test table to check out the limits.
5. If not within limits and heading in the wrong direction, then there could be a special cause beyond the process’s usual variability

Question 21

22. WHEN TO USE A FISHBONE DIAGRAM

Answer 21

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1. When identifying possible causes for a problem
2. When a team’s thinking tends to fall into ruts

Question 22

23. In what phases are check sheets used?

Answer 22

1. Define
2. Measure
3. Control

Question 23

24. What is a checksheet

Answer 23

1. Record observations of a process.
2. A simple way to collect data in an organized manner.
3. Requires little time and money.
4. It helps you answer the “how often” and “under what conditions.” questions.
5. It can help you see the present state and track progress over time.
6. Source of Pareto charts

Question 24

25. When to use a check sheet.

Answer 24

1. When you want to track the frequency of problems
2. Create a baseline
3. Investigate conditions influencing a problem or event
4. Gather data and feed it into further analysis eg Perato chart

Question 25

26. What is needed to create a check sheet

Answer 25

1. Flipchart or whiteboard
2. Markers
3. Paper and pen

Question 26

27. What is check sheet planning?

Answer 26

1. (Who) - Understanding who is going to do the monitoring?
2. (What) - As a problem can have many causes, understand what causes/categories you will monitor.
3. (How) - how is the data going to be captured?
4. (How long) - how long is the monitoring period?

Question 27

28. What are the components of a check sheet

Answer 27

1. Ensure the problem is stated.
2. Add the categories as row headers.
3. Add the time scales as column headers.
4. Add row totals in the furthest column to the right without values.
5. Add column totals in the lowest row without values.
6. Add the observer’s name to the check sheet.
7. Add the date period the data was captured.
8. Add comments section.

Question 28

29. What is a Scatter Diagram?

Answer 28

1. Used to investigate the relationship between two numeric variables graphically.
2. Used to prove or disprove the relationship between cause and effect.
3. Then “Cause” is the independent variable and is plotted on the x-axis.
4. The “Effect” is the dependent variable and is plotted on the Y-axis.

Question 29

30. What are the components of a Scatter diagram

Answer 29

1. Define X axis scale. This is the numeric variable for the “Cause” ( Exercise Hrs Per Week).
2. Define Y axis scale. This is the numeric variable for the “Effect” ( Weight in pounds).
3. Record the data for each subject (Exercise Hrs Per Week/Weight in pounds) (x,y).

Question 30

31. When to use a Scatter Diagram

Answer 30

1. Analyse - Identify potential root cause.
2. Analyse - Determine whether a cause and effect are related.
3. Improve - confirm causation by graphing post-improvement results.

Question 31

32. What is a Histogram?

Answer 31

1. It is a vertical bar graph that depicts the distribution of numeric data on a horizontal x-axis.
2. The height of each bar represents how many times the numeric value on the x-axis was captured or observed.
3. The Pareto graph uses categorical data on the x-axis but the Histogram uses numeric data on the x-axis

Question 32

33. When to use a histogram

Answer 32

1. To see where the majority of values in a dataset fall.
2. To see how much variation between values there is.
3. Check the results of a histogram against an end line or specification.

Question 33

34. What are the possible shapes that can be made by a histogram and what do they mean

Answer 33

1. The wider the shape means greater the variation.
2. Bell Shaped - Normal distribution of process data
3. Skewed - distribution is skewed to one side of the middle. Limits are preventing outcomes on one side.
4. Bi-modal (double peak) - has two humps. This is an indication tow different processes are represented in one istogram.
5. Comb - alternating tall and short peaks - data could be rounded to the nearest value, relook at data.
6. Truncated - data sharply drops off the end. The data may have been sorted before collection and removed from the histogram.

Question 34

35. What are the components of a Histogram?

Answer 34

1. Define the X-xis scale Min to Max of values captured.
2. Define the Y-xis scale as the frequency of values captured.
3. Add the bars based on the data captured