What it is for: Pareto analysis ranks the categories of a problem by how often they occur, so the team puts its effort where most of the problem actually sits. You leave with a ranked table, each category's share and cumulative share, and an agreed first focus.
Who it helps: Service, operations and quality teams who have more complaints, errors or delays than they can fix at once and need to decide where to start.
When to use it
When a recurring problem has many causes and the team cannot fix them all at once.
When opinions differ about which issue matters most and you want counts, not volume of complaint.
Before and after a change, to see whether the biggest category actually shrank.
How to use it
Define one event precisely, so everyone counts it the same way.
Fix the period and collect every occurrence in that window.
Agree the categories before counting, with an 'Other' that stays small.
Count each category, rank from most to least frequent, and work out share and cumulative share.
Choose the few categories that together cover most of the count and act on those first.
Tip: If 'Other' becomes one of your largest categories, your categories are wrong. Split it before you rank.
Credits and sources: Original Tiremesù worksheet and wording. Method credit: Vilfredo Pareto; applied to quality by Joseph M. Juran. Further reading: ASQ: What is a Pareto chart?
Full guide and film:https://www.tiremesu.com/guides/pareto-analysis
