Visual Six Sigma: Making Data Analysis Lean

7.6. Summary

Rick now gathers his findings and recommendations from his investigations relative to the two tasks he was given by his sales and marketing vice president, which were to:

• Verify the claims of the marketing group that a limited promotion they ran for Pharma Inc.'s major product from May through December 2008 was very successful.

• Determine whether there are regional differences in performance relative to sales of Pharma Inc.'s major product.

As for the first task, given the available evidence, the 2008 promotional activity in Midlands, Southern England, and Northern Ireland did have a positive impact, just as the marketing group had claimed. Physicians in these regions averaged 81.6, 77.0, and 72.9 prescriptions, respectively, over the eight-month period (Exhibit 7.42). Meanwhile, physicians in the best nonpromotional region, Greater London, averaged 67.3 prescriptions. In the worst nonpromotional regions, Wales and Northern England, physicians averaged 42.5 prescriptions over that eight-month period. The oneway plot in Exhibit 7.39 shows the picture by region with the data summarized by physician, and the bubble plot in Exhibit 7.61 shows the picture summarized by sales representative and adjusted by the number of physicians per sales representative.

Rick also learns that more visits by sales representatives generally lead to more prescriptions being written for Pharma Inc.'s major product (Exhibit 7.51). This effect is especially true when representatives leave promotional ...