Pareto Chart

Use Pareto Chart to identify the most frequent defects, the most common causes of defects, or the most frequent causes of customer complaints. Pareto charts can help to focus improvement efforts on areas where the largest gains can be made.

In This Topic

Defects or attribute data
Summarized variables (optional)
By variable
Combine the remaining defects after this cumulative percent
Display percent scale and cumulative line

For information about data considerations, examples, and interpretation, go to Overview for Pareto Chart.

Defects or attribute data

Enter the column that contains the raw data or the summary data. If you have a single column of raw data, enter that column. If you have summary data, enter the column that contains the names of the defects.

In both cases, the column can contain text or numeric data. If you use text data, be sure that the defect names are distinct within the first 15 characters.

Summarized variables (optional)

Enter a numeric column that contains the counts of the summary data.

By variable

Enter a grouping variable in By variable to create a separate chart for each level of the grouping variables. The columns that you enter can be numeric or text, and must be the same length as the columns in Defects or attribute data and Summarized variables. The y-scales for each variable are the same across the multiple charts.

When you enter a By variable, Minitab enables the Bar ordering drop down.

Same bar order per graph: Use the same ordering of bars. The order of the bars in all of the Pareto charts is determined by the first group.
Independent bar order per graph: Order the bars in each group's Pareto chart independently of all other groups. Because the bars in each Pareto chart are in Pareto order, the order might be different between groups in the individual graphs.

Combine the remaining defects after this cumulative percent

Minitab generates bars for defect categories until the cumulative percentage surpasses the percentage that you specify. Then, Minitab groups the remaining defects into a category labeled "Other".

Display percent scale and cumulative line

Select this option to display the cumulative percent symbols, the connecting line, and the percent scale.