What is the Power of a Graph?

What is the power of a graph? Chatting with a new client this week, I made the comment that generating a particular graph was one of the best days of my career.

I got a supportive and only slightly teasing “I believe that” back in reply, but the fact is that in the world of Process Engineering and Continuous Improvement, everything really does come down to a graph in the end.

We rarely have clear tangible and physical evidence of the improvements we make. We don’t draw pretty CAD models we can show off and we don’t generally build physical products or tools.  We take systems and break them down into components, identify the points where improvements would make the largest impact and tweak, modify or overhaul those points.

And in the end, after we pour days, weeks or months of creativity and hard work out on a problem, we grade our own success based on a line on a graph, and it just might be the best day of our career.