Check Out Maggie Benson's Journey
Folks, Over ten years ago, I created the characters Patty and The Professor. The intent was to tell SMT assembly process improvement stories through t...
Patty And The Professor
Using a Math PreTest Before Giving a Lean Six Sigma Workshop
Patty tells Rob and The Professor how important it is to use a math pretest to determine the skill level of her class before launching into her traini...
Phil Zarrow Weighs in on Productivity
Folks, I ran into good friend Phil Zarrow the other day. Phil, Jim Hall, and I developed the SMTA Certification Prog...
Pareto Chart Your Data to Help in Continuous Improvement
After a delightful lunch with Rob, Pete, and the Professor, Patty settled into her office to prepare a lecture on statistics. She was still enjo...
What is Cicret and why is it important?
Folks, Let’s check in on Patty…… Patty had to admit that she was getting annoyed. Two of the female engineering students were alwa...
The False Positive Paradox
Folks, Let’s check in on Patty….... Patty was intensely preparing a lecture on Bayes’ Theorem. She always felt that this theo...
Demonstrating Zero Defects In SMT Production?
Folks, let’s see how Patty is doing at Ivy U….. Patty had to admit that she really liked being a professor at Ivy University. No, t...
Comparing Two Weibull Distributions
Folks, Let’s look at Patty’s last day of class…... As she was driving north to teach her statistics class, Patty was sad to see her...
Weibull Analysis at Ivy U
Folks, Let’s check in on how Patty is doing at Ivy U. Patty was nearing the end of her teaching stint at Ivy U. Only a few more classes re...
Productivity High at PCM, Springfield VT
Folks, Every year, the wonderful folks at PCM host a visit from my class on manufacturing processes and provide a real-world tour of an electronics as...
An Example of Cpk and Non Normal Data In Electronics Assembly Soldering
Folks, Let’s see how Patty is doing after teaching her first class at Ivy U… Patty arrived at home after teaching her first class at Ivy ...
Cpk can Only be Calculated from Data that are Normally Distributed
Folks, Let’s look in on Patty…. Patty was really nervous. As a matter of fact, there was no time she remembered being this nervous....
RoHS Medical "Per Homogeneous" Conclusion
Folks, Let’s see how Patty and Pete are doing with their Medical Device RoHS Crisis….. Patty and Pete sat in a plane on the runway of the...
First Pass Yield Continued
Folks, Let’s see how Patty is doing with her latest challenge….. Patty had decided to call The Professor and see what advice he had to of...
Special Cause and Common Cause Variation and Knob Twiddling: continued
Folks, Let’s see how Pete is handling the wave solder crisis. Pete had to admit that he was surprised by the positive outcome of his meeting wit...
Special Cause and Common Cause Variation and Knob Twiddling
Folks, It’s been a while. Let’s look in on Patty…... Patty stared, bleary eyed, at her laptop screen. It was the day after th...
Profitability Potential in Printed Circuit Board Assembly
Folks, The impetus for writing the Patty and the Professor series, in 2009, <posts here> <hardcopy book here> came from my obs...
Patty Presents Her Electronics Assembly Copy Exactly Strategy
Folks, Patty is getting ready for her meeting on “Copy Exactly” with Mike Madigan….... It was after 6:30 PM and Patty was just arri...
Patty Cost Analyzes an MRI scan
Folks, Let’s see how Patty is doing with the latest crisis…… Upon hearing Claire Perkins inform her that Rob was in the hospital, ...
Patty Pitches NMAC/I/O
Folks, Patty arrived at work an hour early to prepare for her meeting with ACME CEO Mike Madigan. Nineteen days ago, he had asked her to develop ...
Patty Seeks the Ultimate Electronics Assembly Productivity Metric
Folks, Let’s look in on Patty…... Patty was just finishing a report on work that she and Pete had performed with a team of her ACME colle...
QFN Reliability in SMT Electronics Assembly
Folks, Let’s look in on Rob: Rob looked at the new photo of Patty and their twin sons Peter and Michael. What a handful those two 18 month-...