Understanding Variation
Activities as varied as answering customers’ questions, preparing invoices, manufacturing products, delivering services, powering offices and factories, and even gaining new business can all be understood as “processes”. A fundamental property of all but the most trivial of processes is that their outputs vary, and such variation is usually troublesome. The foundation of Dr W Edwards Deming’s guidance on process improvement was the understanding of that variation, with the aim of reducing it and thus making the process more reliable and predictable.
