Supercharge Six Sigma with TIBCO

Spotfire Analytics

Lean Six Sigma is a business management approach that seeks

to improve performance by reducing errors, outliers and process
variability. Pioneered in manufacturing industries to improve product
quality, Lean Six Sigma has lately been applied in service industries
such as telecommunications and banking with good results. TIBCO
Spotfires interactive and visual software suite supports this business
methodology and helps to spread Lean Six Sigma practices to all
corners of the enterprise.

AT A G L A N C E

The tasks involved in monitoring a physical production flow are not

so different from those required to improve the throughput and
effectiveness of customer-support helpdesks. Because of this, the
telecoms industry has applied Spotfire analytics in the context of Lean
Six Sigma methodologies to improve business areas such as customer
operations, end-to-end management and order fulfillment.

BENEFITS

Spotfire analytics will help to speed adoption and broaden the reach
of any Lean Six Sigma implementation thanks to its visualizationdriven and user-configurable interface (no need for programming).
Users do not need intense product training or statistical knowledge to
get up to speed; and casual and power users alike will be happy with
how simple yet powerful a configured application can be.
Never before has it been so easy for an analyst to pinpoint errors,
perform root-cause analysis or identify high variability in data from
any source.

With TIBCO Spotfire analytics it will be

easier than ever to implement Lean Six
Sigma in the organization.

Ease of use and speed fosters fast

adoption, even among power users
No programming requirements or need
for deep statistical knowledge lowers
barriers for more casual users
Connects to multiple data types across
enterprise systems
Spotfire analytics puts the user in control
of the information in the databases
and MS Excel sheets. IT organizations
dont have to run time-consuming data
warehouse or data cube projects

Supercharge Six Sigma with TIBCO Spotfire Analytics

With the addition of Spotfire analytics, certified Six

Sigma professionals at all levels now have a wide
variety of tools to help them improve company
processes. Customers have aligned Spotfire with
classical six-sigma tasks:
Define track historical process performance,
identify and prioritize signals needing
improvement, review project metrics
Measure identify variability and improve
repeatability in process metrics, compute
process-control limits and process capability
Analyze use multivariate, dynamically linked
visualizations, parametric and non-parametric
correlations, links to advanced statistical models
in S+ and R, or other statistical tools via the APIs
(e.g. SAS, SPSS, etc.)
Improve collect and merge data from DOE
experiments, link results to contextual data sets,
build applications that help different disciplines
and stakeholders to collaborate on the desktop
and the web
Control interpret changes in behavior after
process changes, continuous evaluation of
process capability

Among the visual and statistical tools available

in Spotfire analytics software you will find:
histograms
box plots
Pareto charts
run charts
parametric and non-parametric correlation
statistics
curve-fitting
clustering and others
Statisticians will delight in the support and easy
integration of a world of S+ and R statistics,
data mining, and optimization and time-seriesanalysis algorithms within Spotfire applications.
With these statistical-programming
environments and tools, Lean Six Sigma
methodologies can be adapted to different
data and applied to business-process-specific
tasks.
With Spotfire analytics it is possible for an
analyst to interactively change control limits
and immediately see which outliers fail to
meet the process-capability requirements.
To perform root-cause analyses they might

With Spotfire I can

make the deep dive
immediately. A few
clicks are sufficient to
identify defects and
discover out of control
root causes. In other
packages I can see
the same graph, but
cant drill down to see
the explanation. This
requires additional
manual operations
in spreadsheets or
custom databases
Black Belt at major
European Telco

Supercharge Six Sigma with TIBCO Spotfire Analytics

drill down into the outliers (by marking them on

the screen) and generate a list of all occurrences
causing high variability or errors.
A six-sigma dashboard can easily be configured
by a Black Belt or Green Belt using Spotfire
Professional, and then be deployed for use on
the web for wide distribution wherever LeanSix-Sigma methodology is important. Spotfire
analytics is often used live in working meetings
for what-if analysis in support of group decision

making. The clarity of display and ease of asking

new questions dynamically helps to form and
keep consensus across management and analyst
decision makers.
By adding optional modules it is possible to
trigger alerts and send notifications by email or
SMS if a threshold has been exceeded. The alerts
can be triggered in real-time as data is entered
into a database or as it flows continuously through
operational systems.

A big advantage of
Spotfire is how good it
looks. Six Sigma is not
only about statistics,
its also about Change
Management. If I cant
convey my message
nothing will happen
Lean Six Sigma Expert

Business Case: Out of Control Detection

Automatically generate email/sms notifications when
limits have been exceeded

Investigate if and when high variability in the

data occur in the control chart

Use Histograms and Normal Distribution plots

to see how the defects/errors occur

Dynamically change the thresholds that

generate email alerts by manipulating the
SIGMA Slider in the interface

Business Case: Root Cause Analyses

Using the Intuitive and powerful Treemap

visualization

Investigate where errors are occurring

throughout a rich hierarchy of data
structure

Drill down to underlying variables to

identify root causes of problems

Get detailed informations on the records in

the Table Plot

Supercharge Six Sigma with TIBCO Spotfire Analytics

Business Case: Simulation and Sensitivity

Analyses

How many more defects/errors would be

generated if a KPI changed slightly?

How robust is the model for shocks?

Business Case: Outlier Detection and

comparisons of groups

What can we learn from other groups/

departments/employees in the
organization with better performance than
others?

Do we have outliers that are generating

high variability in the data?

Which variables are mostly correlated to a

critical KPI?

Analyze all the dimensions using ANOVA

or Box Plot statistics in Spotfire analytics?

In summary, TIBCO Spotfire Analytics provide Lean Six Sigma professionals with a powerful,
adaptable visual-analysis application that can be quickly configured to handle numerous classic LeanSix-Sigma analysis processes and tasks. Spotfire Analytics can be configured to meet the needs of
both hardcore analysts or engineers, and more casual users. This allows the widespread and rapid
adoption of one common, user-friendly visual analytics platform across the enterprise.

http://spotfire.tibco.com
TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TIBX) is a provider of infrastructure software for companies to use on-premise or as part
of cloud computing environments. Whether its efficient claims or trade processing, cross-selling products based on realtime customer behavior, or averting a crisis before it happens, TIBCO provides companies the two-second advantageTM
the ability to capture the right information, at the right time and act on it preemptively for a competitive advantage. More
than 4,000 customers worldwide rely on TIBCO to manage information, decisions, processes, and applications in real-time.
TIBCO Spotfire provides in-memory analytics software for next generation business intelligence. By offering a visual,
interactive experience, Spotfire helps professionals quickly discover new and actionable insights in information. Learn
more at http://spotfire.tibco.com.
2010 All Rights Reserved. TIBCO, TIBCO Software, The Power of Now, the TIBCO and Spotfire logos, and Spotfire are trademarks or registered trademarks of TIBCO Software Inc. in the United
States and/or other countries. All other product and company names are marks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification
purposes only.

TIBCO Spotfire
TIBCO Software Inc.
212 Elm Street
Somerville, MA 02144
Tel: +1 617 702 1600

+1 800 245 4211
Fax: +1 617 702 1700