Carly Barry

Marketing Generalist

Carly Barry’s role at Minitab Inc., developer and provider of software and services for quality improvement and statistics education, is to collaborate with others to reveal the power of quality improvement and data analysis tools in all sorts of deliverable communications—from customer success stories to help resources. Her goal is to present statistics in a manner that can be easily related to real life. In an age where lean Six Sigma and other data-driven quality improvement projects can save companies millions, it pays to be knowledgeable about data analysis.

Thu, 08/14/2014 - 13:42
Quality Improvement in Healthcare Do process changes always improve the patient experience?
Thu, 08/14/2014 - 13:42
Via Christi Health, the largest provider of healthcare in Kansas, operates a Center for Clinical Excellence that’s made up of a team of quality practitioners; all have had lean and Six Sigma training. I recently had the opportunity to talk with the…
A Little Trash Talk Improving recycling processes at Rose-Hulman
Thu, 07/10/2014 - 00:00
The Six Sigma students at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology are at it again! A few months back, we blogged about the Six Sigma project they did to reduce food waste at the on-campus dining center. This time, the students—led by Dr. Diane Evans,…
Making Statistical Mistakes Is Easy Six common ones you can avoid
Thu, 06/05/2014 - 14:15
It’s all too easy to make mistakes involving statistics. Powerful statistical software can remove a lot of the difficulty surrounding statistical calculation, reducing the risk of mathematical errors, but correctly interpreting the results of an…
Selecting the Right Quality Improvement Project A prioritization matrix is a good place to start
Mon, 05/05/2014 - 09:31
A few years ago I wrote about the difficulties that can ensue when you’re trying to get started on a lean Six Sigma or quality improvement initiative. What can be especially difficult is having many potential projects and you aren’t sure which one…
Using Statistics to Show Your Boss Process Improvements Comparing before-and-after process capability
Thu, 04/03/2014 - 17:30
Ugh, your process is producing some parts that don’t meet your customer’s specifications. Fortunately, after a little hard work, you find a way to improve the process. However, you want to perform the appropriate statistical analysis to back up…
Reducing Breakage in Window Manufacturing Students use Six Sigma to improve processes at Silver Line
Thu, 01/23/2014 - 10:21
I had the opportunity to speak with a great group of students from the New Jersey Governor’s School of Engineering and Technology—a summer program for high-achieving high school students. Students in the program complete a set of challenging…
Avoiding a Lean Six Sigma Project Failure, Part 4 The perils of insufficient training and management support
Tue, 12/03/2013 - 17:31
In my first post in this series, I mentioned that Minitab reached out to our customers who are practitioners of quality improvement to better understand how they complete projects, what tools they use, and the challenges they come across in…
Avoiding a Lean Six Sigma Project Failure, Part 3 Choosing the right projects for DMAIC
Tue, 10/08/2013 - 15:20
In part one and part two of this series, I've outlined some reasons why a lean Six Sigma project might have been deemed a failure. We’ve gathered many of these reasons from surveying and talking with our customers. I'd like to present a few more…
Avoiding a Lean Six Sigma Project Failure, Part 2 Using the critical-to-quality (CTQ) tree
Thu, 09/26/2013 - 10:58
In part one, I discussed how to avoid a lean Six Sigma project failure, specifically if the reason behind the failure is that the project solution never gets implemented. Now let’s discuss a few other project roadblocks that prevent teams from…
Avoiding a Lean Six Sigma Project Failure, Part 1 Use a project charter to establish managers’ approval and process owners’ follow-through
Thu, 09/12/2013 - 09:24
Read part two here. Failure. Just saying the word makes me cringe. And if you’re human, you’ve probably suffered through and overcome at least a couple failures. But when it comes to lean Six Sigma projects, there’s really nothing worse than having…