All repeated events will produce results that vary over time. Variation occurs naturally in all processes. Variation becomes an problem when the fluctuation causes outputs to fall outside of the standard, and therefore don’t meet the Customer or Organisation’s expectation.
Tools like the Run Chart help teams to spot whether variation is creating recognisable patterns, shifts or trends in the data. A Run Chart is more sophisticated time-series plot, in which the data is plotted in time order, i.e. the sequence in which it occurred or was collected, to see how the process is behaving over time.
Once this is known, teams can find ways to either remove the cause of the variation or work with patterns or naturally occurring cycles in their processes.