The “Flow Chart Summary Matrix,” written in 2010 by John W. Moran and Grace L. Duffy, is a description of a quality improvement tool that helps those individuals who have constructed a flow chart understand the variables at each process step that could impact changes in costs, time, or people. A comparison of actual and proposed costs indicates whether the process change is an improvement and by how much. It takes data analysis to develop a value for each part of the matrix. The effort to complete the matrix gives a problem-solving team a deeper understanding of the process under study.​