Visual Six Sigma, 2nd Edition

Chapter 11Beyond “Point and Click” with JMP

Thus far we have emphasized that Visual Six Sigma projects, because they are focused on discovery, necessarily involve working with data interactively to uncover and model relationships. The case histories in the preceding six chapters illustrate how JMP can support this pattern of use better than most other software.

However, as a project nears completion in the Utilize Knowledge step, there is a need to preserve and perpetuate the resulting performance gains. This usually requires monitoring the process over time. In turn, this leads to the broader question of how we can automate an analysis so it will work with new data with minimal effort from us. Here we use the word automate in the general sense of saving our collective effort and time, rather than in any technical sense (an example of the latter is the COM standard from Microsoft for interoperation of software components, which JMP also supports).¹

This chapter provides a brief discussion of automation. This topic is of importance not just for Visual Six Sigma but also for the effective and efficient use of JMP in more general contexts. In Chapter 3 we touched on a related, even overlapping, topic when we reviewed how to personalize JMP to make it better fit the skills and requirements of a user or group of users. Generally, appropriate personalization saves time and effort, sometimes to the point of making an analysis viable when it otherwise would not be.

So this chapter is ...