Variation

Variation is a major cause of quality problems and consequently many process improvement activities
focus on identifying and reducing it. It is thus important to understand as much about variation as
possible, even though its statistical nature can be disconcerting.
This chapter discusses the basic principles of variation, keeping the mathematical content to a
minimum. In keeping with the style of the book, calculations are also minimized, consisting only of
inserting numbers into simple formulae and using illustrated panels for calculations involving lists of
numbers.
There are four main sections in this chapter:

Understanding variation: Key principles of this important topic.

Measuring variation: Principles of measurement of variation.
Measuring centering: Mean, median and mode.
Measuring spread: Range and standard deviation.

Understanding variation
The continuously variable nature of the universe is at the heart of the science of statistics, and at first
glance can look very complex, particularly if approached from a mathematical viewpoint. This can lead
to it being ignored, which is a pity, as even a simple appreciation of it can result in a reduction in
haphazard attempts to control it, with a consequent saving in wasted time and degraded performance.
What is variation?
When a process is executed repeatedly, its outputs are seldom identical. For example, when a gun is
successively fired at a target, as in Fig. 1, the bullets will not all pass through the same hole.

Fig. 1. Variation in targeted results

This lack of repeatability is caused by the variation or variability in the process. If these causes are
understood, then this can lead to the development of solutions to reduce the variation in the process
and result in more consistent products which require less inspection and testing, have less rejection
and failure, cost less to build, have more satisfied customers and are more profitable.

Causes of variation
Variation in process output is caused by variations within the process. These may be one or more of:
1. Differing actions within the process.
2. Differing effects within the process.
3. Differing inputs to the process.
As an example for each of these conditions, the variation in the placement of the bullet holes in the
target may be affected by:
1. The gun being held or used differently.
2. Wear in the hammer mechanism causing the shell to be struck differently.
3. The bullets being of slightly differing shape or weight.
Thus, even if the first point is eliminated by putting the gun in a clamp and firing it remotely, the bullets
will still not all hit the target in the identical position.
The reasons why variation occurs can be divided into two important classes, known as common and
special causes of variation. These are discussed further below.
Common causes of variation
Within any process there are many variable factors, as indicated above, each of which may vary a
small amount and in a predictable way, but when taken together result in a degree of randomness in
the output, as indicated in the figure below. These seemingly uncontrollable factors are called common
causes of variation.
Common causes of variation can seldom be eliminated by 'tampering' with the process. For example,
consider the effect of simple adjustments to the clamped gun, as in the figure below.

Fig. 2. Tampering
1. The first hole is to the left of center, so the clamp is rotated a little to the right.

2. If the clamp had been left alone, the second bullet would have gone a little to the right of
center, but as it has been moved right, the bullet now goes further to the right. As a reaction to
this, the clamp is rotated somewhat more to the left.
3. The third bullet tends towards the left anyway, so the result is a hole even further to the left.
It can be seen from this that it would have been better not to tinker with the clamp, and that the score
would be more likely to improve if the whole system were understood first and then fundamental
improvements made, such as building a better gun or making better bullets.
Special causes of variation
Special causes of variation are unusual occurrences which come from outside the normal common
causes, for example where a shot goes outside the main grouping, due to someone tripping over the
gunner as the gun is fired, as below:

Fig. 3. Special and common causes of variation

Special causes can thus be addressed as individual cases, finding the cause for each occurrence
outside the normal grouping and preventing it from recurring. This may be contrasted with the way that
common causes must be addressed through the overall process.
The way that causes are addressed in a process improvement project is usually first to recognize and
eliminate special causes, and then to find ways of improving the overall process in order to reduce
common causes of variation.
Static and dynamic variation
The distribution of measurements as described above takes no account of time or sequence, as it is
not important which measurement came first or last. This is static variation.
If the order in which measurements are made is known, then significant trends may be detected,
which may be useful for catching a problem before it becomes serious. This is dynamic variation.
For example, if the gunner is initially accurate, but becomes less so as his arm tires, then this may not
be detected from the final positioning of holes on the target - it could only be seen by plotting the
positioning of the holes across time.
Dynamic variation is commonly measured using the Control Chart.

Measuring variation
Variation is not simple to measure, as by its nature is random and individual events cannot be
predicted. Despite this, a degree of measurement can be achieved by looking at how a number of
measurements group together. Usually these items are selected with sampling methods.
The spread of measurements within a group enables special causes of variation to be distinguished
from common causes of variation. Beyond this, the characteristics of how these random events are
spread out can allow improvements in seemingly random chaos to be simply measured.
Distribution of results
It is common in processes for most measurements to cluster around a central value, with less and less
measurements occurring further away from this center. For example, the distribution of holes across
the target will gradually spread out from a central, most common placement, as below:

The Normal distribution

The bell-shaped curve in the figure above occurs surprisingly often and is consequently called
a Normal distribution (or Gaussian distribution, after its discoverer) and has some very useful
properties which can be used to help variation be understood and controlled.
Other distributions
A Normal distribution of measurement values does not always occur, and other distributions may be
caused by various factors, conditions and combinations. Several of these are discussed in Chapter
23. It is a trap to use tools that expect a Normal distribution, such as Process Capability, when the
distribution is not Normal.
The Central Limit Theorem
The reason for the common occurrence of this Normal distribution is either a natural distribution or the
very useful and remarkable effect described by the Central Limit Theorem. This states that, even
where the underlying population distribution is not normal, the distribution of the averages of a set of
samples will be approximately normal.
This is clearly illustrated below, which shows the distribution of average values achieved by throwing
all possible combinations of one, two, three and four dice.

With a single die, the distribution is rectangular, as there is one, equally likely way of achieving each
number. With two dice, the distribution becomes triangular, as although there is only one way of
averaging one (two ones), there are six ways of averaging the central value of 3.5 (1-6, 2-5, 3-4, 4-3,
5-2 and 6-1).
With three dice, the distribution becomes curved, and with four dice it is markedly bell-shaped, as
there is still only one way of averaging one, but there are four ways of averaging 1.25 (three 1s and a
2) and so on up to 147 ways of averaging 3.5! A key use of this effect is that a predictable Normal
distribution can be produced by measuring samples in groups of as few as four items at a time.
Measuring distribution
The measurements of a process can vary in two different ways, in terms of their centering and
their spread, as illustrated below:

The centering (also called accuracy or central tendency) of a process, is the degree to which
measurements gather around a target value. The spread (also called dispersion or precision) of the
process is the degree of scatter of its output values.

Measuring centering
To measure the centering of a process requires that the center point of the set of results be identified.
The accuracy of the process can then be determined by comparing it with target values. There are
three ways of measuring this center point: the mean (or average), the median and the mode (see the
figure below).

Fig. 1. Mean, median and mode in distributions

Mean
The most common way of measuring the center point of a set of measurements is with the average,
or mean (i.e. the sum of all measurements divided by the total number of measurements).
The mean is useful for further mathematical treatment, as it considers all values (although a few
extreme values can cause the mean to become unrepresentative of the rest of the values).
Median
If the measurements are listed in numeric order, then the median is the number half-way down the list.
If there is an even number of measurements, it is half-way between the middle two numbers. The
median is not distorted by extreme values, but it can be very unrepresentative of the other values,
particularly in a distribution which is not symmetrical.
Mode
The mode is the most commonly occurring measurement. In a distribution graph, this is the highest
point. The mode is also not distorted by extreme values, and is useful for measuring such as average
earnings. However, there can be more than one mode, and it is not as good as the mean for
mathematical treatment.
In a symmetrical distribution such as a Normal distribution, these three measures are the same. In
an asymmetrical (or skewed) distribution, as below, there is a simple rule-of-thumb formula which can
be used to estimate one, given the other two:
Mean - Mode = 3 x (Mean - Median)

Measuring spread
There are two main ways of measuring the degree of spread of a set of measurements: the range and
the standard deviation.
Range
The range of a set of measures is simply the difference between the largest and the smallest
measurement value.
Thus, for example, if you have a set of measures (21, 22, 26, 19, 12, 24, 33) then you first find the
highest measure (33) and subtract the lowest measure (12) to give the range (21).
This is easy to calculate, but there can be several problems with using it:
Special causes of variation can cause an unrealistically wide range.
As more measurements are made, it will tend to increase.
It gives no indication of the data between its values.

Standard deviation
The standard deviation is a number which is calculated using a simple mathematical trick (calculating
the square root of the average of squares) to find an 'average' number for the distance of the majority
of measures from the mean.
The standard deviation is of particular value when used with the Normal distribution, where known
proportions of the measurements fall within one, two and three standard deviations of the mean, as
below.

Fig. 1. Percentages in Normal Distribution between Standard Deviations

Thus, given a set of measures, the mean and the standard deviation can be calculated, and from this
can be derived the probability of future measures falling into the three bands, provided that the
distribution is normal (a simple visual test for this is to draw a histogram and look for the bell shape).
For example, if the gunner has an average score of 56 per target card, with a standard deviation of 6,
then, provided the distribution is normal:
68.3% of scores will be 56 6 (= between 50 and 62)
95.4% of scores will be 56 12 (= between 44 and 68)
99.7% of scores will be 56 18 (= between 38 and 74)
or, breaking out the six bands:
8

2.1% of scores will be between 38 and 44

13.6% of scores will be between 44 and 50
34.1% of scores will be between 50 and 56
34.1% of scores will be between 56 and 62
13.6% of scores will be between 62 and 68
2.1% of scores will be between 68 and 74
The remaining 0.3% of scores will be below 38 or above 74.

10