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Enter your data. Get an 80/20 Pareto chart with automatic vital few detection. Export as PNG in one click.
3,847 Pareto charts createdQuality defectsCustomer complaintsOperations bottlenecks
Example: Customer complaints analysis
Add categories (defect types, complaint reasons, error codes) and their counts.
Bars auto-sort from highest to lowest. Cumulative % line and 80% threshold drawn automatically.
The tool highlights which categories account for 80% of the total — your highest-priority targets.
| # | Category / Defect type | Count | % of total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 0 | 100% | ||
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A Pareto chart turns raw count data into a priority list. The steps below use the tool above, but the same process works in Excel, Google Sheets, or any Lean workbook.
Pareto fits specific problem shapes. Knowing when it is the right tool — and when it is not — saves hours of misdirected analysis.
Three short examples across industries. Full case studies with data tables live in the Pareto examples article.
An electronics assembly line logged 6 defect types over 30 shifts. Top 2 (cold joints, misaligned components) accounted for 78% of failures. Focus on reflow profile and placement programming closed the loop in 6 weeks.
SaaS support ticket categories over Q2. Billing disputes and login issues drove 82% of volume. Engineering fixed SSO edge cases; Finance streamlined invoicing. Tickets fell 41% in the next quarter.
ED throughput bottleneck causes, 4-week study. Lab turnaround and bed availability = 81% of wait-time impact. Two parallel kaizen events cut median door-to-disposition by 28 minutes.
The 80/20 rule, also called the Pareto principle, states that roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. In quality terms: a small number of defect types usually cause the majority of customer complaints, rework, or downtime. The Pareto chart visualises this so you can focus corrective action on the vital few.
Use Pareto when you have count data by category and need to decide what to fix first. Good examples: defect types per shift, customer complaint reasons, equipment downtime causes, safety incident categories. Pareto is the right first step before drilling into any single category with a 5 Whys or Fishbone.
A Pareto chart is a bar chart with two added features: bars are sorted in descending order by default, and a cumulative percentage line is overlaid. The sort and the cumulative line together reveal which categories cross the 80% threshold — a plain bar chart shows quantities but not the cumulative impact.
Six to twelve categories is the useful range. Fewer than six and the chart loses prioritisation value. More than twelve dilutes the signal and the 80/20 line becomes less meaningful. If you have many categories, group the smallest ones into an "Other" bucket.
Only if you can convert it to counts. Pareto needs numeric frequency per category — count of complaints, minutes of downtime, number of defects. If your data is purely qualitative, use a Fishbone diagram first to structure it, then run a Pareto once you have counts per category.
PNG export is one click. For an editable Excel chart, follow the step-by-step tutorial at How to make a Pareto chart in Excel — it walks through formulas, conditional formatting, and the dual-axis combo chart.
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