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Improvement Insights Blog
Latest "Improvement Insights" Posts
Lots of people hesitate to get started on improvements. Here’s why and what to do about it.
“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“I have noticed that a lot of people, when they get trained in Six Sigma or whatever, they hesitate to get started. You know it’s like, “I’m afraid of not doing it right,” or “I’m afraid of not tackling the right problem,” or “I’m afraid of somebody [making me feel] stupid or somebody criticizing what I’m doing,” or whatever it is…
“Well, I hate to tell you this, but you have to be bad to start, right?
Continue Reading "Are You Hesitating to Improve?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Six Sigma.
How to create a Hassle-Free work experience for everyone without spending too much time or money.
“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].
“One of my favorite shows on television is Guy Fieri’s Triple D: “Diners Drive-ins and Dives”, and I just enjoy watching him eat other people’s cooking… I can’t explain it to you. My Triple D is “Delay, Defects and Deviation,” and if you do nothing but focus on eliminating delay, defects (mistakes and errors), and deviation (the variation of things), if you do nothing but do that for an hour per week for the rest of your life you will spontaneously figure out a way to make everything hassle-free for yourself, your customers, your suppliers, your boss, your subordinates… whoever it is.
Continue Reading "Triple D – Delays, Defects, Deviation"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean.
Shewhart didn’t make our lives any easier 100 years ago when he started using control charts. Here’s why and what to do about it.
“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].
“Now, a long time ago (I mean this was back in the 1920s and the 1930s), Shewhart did us a disservice. Now, he was most interested in economic control of quality of manufactured product, and he called the charts that he used for that “control charts.” I don’t know about you, but for most people when you hear the word control, they don’t like the idea of being controlled.
Continue Reading "Control Charts? Behavior Charts? Or Performance Charts?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
How can you help people learn Lean Six Sigma quickly and easily? It’s a simple three step process that will slash the learning curve for everyone.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].
“In a recent video I talked to you about the whole idea of “minimally invasive training.” How do we teach people in an hour everything they need to know to start solving problems? To do that you have to think about all the advances that we know about in speed learning.
“If I’m teaching Lean what do I do? First I tell them a story of how I’ve used post-it notes to reduce cycle time by 50%, 60%, 80%, 90% in something.
Continue Reading "Speed Learning for Minimally Invasive Training"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
One big pharma company embraced a more Agile approach to implementing Lean Six Sigma and achieved quick results. How did they do it?
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].
“I was at the Lean Six Sigma conference for ASQ in Phoenix and Novartis gave a whole presentation about implementing Lean and Six Sigma around their sales process. It turns out they didn’t actually apply Lean and Six Sigma to the sales process, they simply optimized everything around it that supported their reps going out into the field and how the reps got paid, but they didn’t really do anything about the sales process.
Continue Reading "Minimally Invasive Lean Six Sigma Training"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
You’ve heard the phrase “Cart before the horse?” Well one Agile company learned a similar phrase during their implementation. Save yourself a lot of time and effort by learning this simple phrase.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software]. I was at the ASQ Lean Six Sigma conference and there was a whole presentation on a company that had implemented Agile for software development, and I was kind of stunned to discover that I think they said they spent $15 million implementing Agile. Well, if you’re spending that much money, I’m not sure you’re being Agile, but anyway…
“So the one thing that they really said about implementing Agile for software improvement, the mistake they made was they started doing projects before they improved the process.
Continue Reading "Process Before Projects"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights.
The job description of the future doesn’t involve manual labor or basic thinking skills. The future will challenge all of us. Here’s why.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].
“At the ASQ Lean Six Sigma conference there was an opening keynote about the acceleration, the exponential acceleration of technology; how it’s just so much faster, so much quicker, so much… it’s just {whooshing up sound}, right? And the costs are going {whooshing down sound}, and so that’s a dramatic shift from how it used to be.Even Six Sigma used to [have to] make charts manually and do stuff like that, but that’s not how it is any more, so he suggested that you think about it in this map.
Continue Reading "Living Exponentially"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
At the 2019 ASQ Lean Six Sigma Conference in Phoenix, a number of Black Belts from major companies told me about the Elephant in the Room that they were afraid to discuss with management even though it was harming their Lean Six Sigma effort. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this story in companies ranging from manufacturing to healthcare. Watch now to find out what it was.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software], and I want to talk to you about the elephant in the room: The thing that I think is actually impeding Six Sigma.
Continue Reading "The Elephant in the Room"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
At the ASQ Lean Six Sigma Conference in Phoenix, they said that the world is accelerating exponentially. Is Lean Six Sigma accelerating exponentially? If we use Agile methods to accelerate Lean Six Sigma, we can move Lean Six Sigma into the 21st century.
Continue Reading "Accelerating Lean Six Sigma Exponentially"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
At the 2018 Magnet Nursing conference in Denver, I saw many improvement posters using line or bar charts with an added trend line to show improvement. Unfortunately, few of the trends were valid. Here’s why:
Continue Reading "Trendlines Are Rarely Improvements"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, QI Macros, Statistics.
