TABLE OF CONTENTS A Pareto chart is a way of tabulating and displaying the problems associated with an issue or the issues associated with a process. Its purpose is to show which of the problems or issues occur most frequently so that attention and time can be focused where the greatest benefit will be achieved. This chart was developed to show that relatively few problems usually account for a relatively large portion of the result.
The Pareto chart graphically illustrates the frequency of occurrence of the causes of a problem or effect. It also highlights the causes having the largest impact. This method has been most widely applied to analyzing the frequency of different types of defects that result in product quality problems.
When the purpose of an analysis is to find trends, patterns, or simply to highlight the important causes, one technique to use is a Pareto chart. In the process management methodology, a Pareto chart is most often used:
In Step 2, "Research Customer Needs and Expectations," to summarize the importance to customers of certain issues.
In Step 3, "Select Issue and Process," to summarize the importance to customers of certain issues.
In Step 10, "Gather Data on Root Causes and Analyze," to analyze the results of the data gathering.
The method described assumes that the team has already decided what data is to be gathered and displayed and also knows how to gather the data. If the data is...
