Steven Ouellette

Steve Ouellette started his career as a metallurgical engineer. It was during this time that his eyes were opened to find that business was not a random series of happenings, but that it could be a knowable enterprise. This continues to fascinate him to this day.

He started consulting in 1996 and has worked in heavy and light industry, service, aerospace, higher education, government, and non-profits. He is the President of The ROI Alliance, LLC. He is the author of Galileo's Telescope, which teaches how to create meaningful metrics and strategic plans, and Data-Driven Leadership, or how to integrate data into management decisions. His author website can be found at steveouellette.com.

Steve has a black belt in aikido, a non-violent martial art, and spent a year in Europe on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship studying the “Evolution, Fabrication, and Social Impact of the European Sword."

Thu, 04/03/2025 - 12:03
The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy There is real competitive danger to a one-size-fits-all approach to specifications
Thu, 03/03/2011 - 14:45
“Come and listen to a story ‘bout a man named Ned / a poor Texas Sharpshooter barely kept his family fed. Then one day he was shootin’ at his barn / and he came up with a plan to spin a silly yarn. ‘Specifications,’ he said, ‘making of… the easy…
Not Another Toyota Article! The better your reputation for quality, the more you get slammed from an adverse event
Thu, 02/10/2011 - 08:07
With the announcement of another Toyota recall, it seems that everyone and their dog have an opinion about Toyota, and some of them might even be drawing the right conclusions. While everyone is allowed to have opinions (not the dogs—on quality…
Statistical Correlation Does Not Always Prove Cause Black Belt or not, common sense is quite rare
Thu, 01/13/2011 - 16:00
After my last column citing some really bizarre flaws in how our brains perceive reality, I thought I might cover some flaws in logic that are applicable in the world of quality. So, basically, even if our brains are working correctly, we can still…
Embracing Your Inner Geek Rules for statistical thinking
Thu, 11/04/2010 - 06:00
I know we have been talking about statistics a lot in my last few articles, but recent reader comments have prompted me to think more about why doing statistics properly matters. Come with me, dear reader, on a journey to find out why you should…
Making Decisions in a Non-Normal World The power of the central limit theorem
Sun, 10/10/2010 - 09:26
Throughout the last couple of articles, I have explained and illustrated that understanding the random sampling distribution (RSD) of a statistic is key to understanding the entire basis of inferential statistics. Which is just a fancy way of…
(Sample) Size Matters Random sampling distribution are really something delightful
Thu, 09/09/2010 - 08:51
Last month I wrote about how the random sampling distribution (RSD) of various sample statistics are the basis for pretty much everything in statistics. If you understand RSDs, you understand a lot about why we do what we do in hypothesis testing,…
The Omnipotence of Random Sampling Distribution Every answer to statistical problems lies within RSD
Tue, 08/03/2010 - 06:00
Story update 10/05/2010: Corrections were made to captions for Figures 6, 7, 8, 9. As I was teaching class the other day, I told the students I was going to reveal to them the one secret they needed to learn to understand every statistical test…
Know the Process Before Altering Its Specifications You must balance risk and benefits when determining acceptability.
Mon, 06/21/2010 - 06:00
So I thought I was done with measurement system analysis after my last column, but I just finished reading Don Wheeler’s June 1 column, “Is the Part in Spec?” and the first thing I thought was, “Well, that was… complicated and ultimately unhelpful…
Destructive Gauges and Measurement System Analysis Can they co-exist?
Mon, 05/10/2010 - 07:30
We have recently covered a lot of ground on the topic of measurement system analysis (MSA). We talked about the basics of MSA, the potential study, the short-term study, and the long-term study. At this point you should have a pretty firm…
Performing a Long-Term MSA Study Testing through time stability
Tue, 03/23/2010 - 11:40
A hh, measurement system analysis—the basis for all our jobs because, as Lord Kelvin said, “… When you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.” How interesting it is then,…