Activity 1: Storyboard: Technary Case Study and Data Analysis

You are a statistician for a large manufacturing company, Technary. The company produces a product, product X. Many other competitors also produce product X. You are presenting to a group of statisticians and mathematicians at your company. The goal of your project is to present ways your company can gain a competitive edge in this industry as it pertains to the production of product X. Assume the audience has a HIGH level of knowledge in statistics and reading/interpreting advanced plots.

For the following case, create six slides: 1 title slide, 3 conflict slides, 1 big idea slide and 1 resolution slide (landing page) with three subsections. Do not put all 6 slides on one page if the text and/or visualizations are not legible. Here are the requirements:

Slide 1) Use an effective and attention-grabbing title for the title slide.

Slide 2) Situation 1: Use tab 1 (Technary Part A) in the excel. The ideal weight of product X is 450 units across the industry. This means consumers of product X prefer this product to be exactly 450 units no matter which company they buy it from. However, the companies sell varying weights of this product because of the inefficiencies of machines that produce this product. In Tab 1, you have sample weights of 1000 products produced at Technary and 4 different competitors in the span of one hour (assume you stood at the production line at each of these 5 companies, measuring/recording the weight of 1000 products). You want to compare the distribution of weights across these 5 companies to assess the quality of machines at each company. More specifically, you want to comment on the precision and accuracy of your machines relative to other companies. Use the correct statistical plot. Use headings/subheadings and explanatory text in your slide. Accuracy refers to how close a measurement is to the true or accepted value. Precision refers to how close measurements of the same item are to each other. After you are done this slide, use your analysis and findings to build your big idea and support your resolution. 

Slide 3) Situation 2: There are people needed on the assembly line in certain areas of the production of product X. The speed at which these employees need to work depends on the speed of the belt. When there is a high demand for Product X, the speed of the belt is increased. If a semi-finished product waits too long on the assembly line (if it is not addressed by an employee), it can get spoiled and needs to be thrown out. Normally, the company is okay with some waste. In tab 2 (Technary Part B), you have the number of waste products per week in a year. It is considered normal waste if the waste in a week is within 2 standard deviations of the mean. More or less than this number means the process is out of control. Comment on whether or not the level of waste is ever out of control. Use the appropriate statistical plot. Follow the same instructions as you did for slide 1. Use your analysis and findings to build your big idea and support your resolution.

Slide 4) Situation 3: A special chemical called Elerium-128 gets used at every step of the production process of Product X. All companies must use Elerium-128 in their production of Product X. You believe that Elerium-128 is not being used efficiently in all the processes and compared to other companies, your usage of Elerium-128 is off. In tab 3 (Technary Part C), you can see the percentage of total Elerium-128 being used at various stages of the production process at Technary and a few competitors. Show the correct plot and follow the instructions in slides 2 and 3.

Slide 5) The big idea goes here. It must be negatively framed.

Slide 6) Creating a landing page with resolutions that hopefully address the conflict introduced in slide 2, 3 and 4. Tie it back to the business question and big idea. In the slides that would come after this resolution landing slide (not required for this activity), you would, ideally, explore these ideas further, in a Minto Pyramid style format. But these further resolution steps are not required.

This purpose of this exercise is to show how data analysis and data visualization can be used in the earlier parts of your data presentation (setting, characters, conflict).

Dataset