Talk:Pareto analysis

Suggestions for improvement
Could do with an example of a pareto chart - I'm having trouble visualising it from the description

--Dan 07:06, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

The how-to section looks as if it's written to be read by little children. And the substance of the article seems mainly missing: where do these percentages come from? Michael Hardy 17:21, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Note: Pareto Analysis is formed exactly to the specifications of the Six Sigma Quality Assurance Methodology. The technique while handy and cannot be made too simple without loss of meaning and quick assessement by teams routinely using Six Sigma techniques.

Problem assoicated factors: frequency associated with failure, failures acconted for Factor 1: 25%                                25% Factor 2: 20%                                45% Factor 3: 15%                                60% Factor 4: 10%                                70% Factor 5: 10%                                80%

This is a list of five factors with frequency for each factor resulting in 80% of the associated causes for a specific failure.

Approach: Investigate/resolve these firs, then re-test and find the next Pareto set of likely factors.

Weakness is correct, small effects that magnify later after testing, may not be detected until after many Mean Time Between Failure mode for the small factor have occured. Even then, a small factor that has a controlling root cause to create conditions where Factor 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 are symptoms will not be detected by this method, but perhaps only after invenstigation and even eventual inclusion in Root Cause or Failure Modes Effects Analysis approaches.

Even then, organizational bias may toss known failure modes off the list of consideration. Perhaps distorting odds or impact or claiming factors are unreasonable or cost prohibitive to fix. In some cases this is true. In others, such as the Japenese Nuclear Power Plan hit by both an earthquake and a consequential tsunami, what might have seemed a double failure mode was causaly linked and so cost effective preparations for that failure mode would have made a deeply useful difference. But, skewed organizational sense or risk reduced the worth (Frequency and impact) of this risk and so did not build a tsunami hardended backup generator upgrade. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arctific (talk • contribs) 16:24, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Quality, Recomended citations for Failure Modes Effects Analysis, also other Six Sigma Techniques: http://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/fmea/

Cause and Effect AKA fishbone diagram http://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/cause-effect/cause-and-effect-aka-fishbone-diagram/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arctific (talk • contribs) 16:08, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Pareto example
You can do a pareto analysis based on costs if you have a spreadsheet of line items with a resulting cost. You then arrange the lines in descending order with the highest cost item at the top. Get a total sum of all costs. Then you calculate the percentage of each line item cost as a percentage of the total cost. It is likely that 80% of the total spend will be concentrated in only 20% of the total line items.199.3.246.231 01:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Kath199.3.246.231 01:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Pareto analysis is basically a problem prioritization tool rather than identifying the root causes. Pareto analysis has to be supplemented using tools like Fishbone analysis or failure mode analysis tool. To give a brief history of the tool, Pareto is an economist who stated that 80% of the worlds wealth is with 20% of the people. To draw a pareto chart. First identify the causes, tag all the issues to these causes ( ideally count the number of issues per cause), sort the issues in descending order, calculate the total count of this issues, compute the cumulative percentage per the cause. Plot the graph using the Cause on the X-axis, and the No. of Issues on the Y-Axis, the top causes that contribute the 80% of the overall causes are the primary contributors of the problems which have to be tackled to eliminate the problems. To identify the root causes for these 20% of the causes, it is suggested to use tools like Fishbone Analysis or Ishikawa diagrams —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vividwriter (talk • contribs) 15:15, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Graph is a poor example of a Pareto Law correlation
Looking at the graph data, it provides a very poor correlation with the Pareto law. The top three causes (50%) are required to be included to generate 83% of the cumulative total.

Whilst Pareto analysis is a tool for use on any data to clarify which are the most important causes, it would seem less confusing if the example chosen complied with the associated principle. i.e. 20% of causes leading to 80% of occurrence.

Suggest either editing data to correlate more strongly with the law, or include a section explaining that pareto analysis is a tool that can be applied to any data and is only named after the law. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.151.49.204 (talk) 08:55, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

A reasonably well done listing of factors that add up to an effect. Effectively a Pareto Chart sorts the importance of factors to an effect. Below is a link to a Pareto Chart done using the preferred approach of Six Sigma Methodology in line with isixsigma.com

Sample_Pareto_Chart_For_Orientation_only 205.242.229.69 (talk) 21:37, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Right now the graph seems to not really match the algorithm listed since the cumulative graph peaks just under 70%, so the intersection with 80% i not there at all. I find it a bit confusing at least --Tampert (talk) 14:07, 27 May 2022 (UTC)