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Improvement Insights Blog
Latest "Improvement Insights" Posts
Even with QI Macros, people sometimes try to do things the hard way without thinking there might be an easier way. One user waited until the ASQ WCQI convention to ask for help. We could have saved her a lot of time if she had emailed or chatted months ago.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I was out at the American Society for Quality conference this last week and one of our groups of users came up and one of the women said, “Well, I update these 91 control charts every week and it takes me like a day and a half, and isn’t there an easier way?”
Continue Reading "Learn to Ask for Help!"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
Most people are still using Excel line, bar and pie charts instead of the tools of quality. How can you expect to achieve Zero Defects or Zero Harm without control charts, Pareto charts, histograms and fishbones?
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“I keep going to these conferences and looking at all these improvement posters, and people have these line charts with trend lines. Those trend lines are like fake news. They’re not true. You can’t tell if it means there was an improvement one way or the other.
Continue Reading "Are You Using the Tools of Quality?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
If you’re creating every process in your business from scratch, you may be wasting time and missing opportunities to make your system mistake-proof. Here’s what I mean:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“Way back when I was at Bell Laboratories, we were building a new software system that scheduled how many transmission lines ran between point A and point B all over the country. The problem was we had a lot to do and very little time to do it in, and so we started working on what I call “reuse,” which is where you create something but then it can be reused endlessly.
Continue Reading "Make Something Reusable!"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
Shunryū Suzuki said there are four kinds of horses: excellent, good, poor and bad horses. When it comes to statistics, the bad horse may be the best horse. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“Shunryū Suzuki said there are four kinds of horses: Excellent ones, good ones, poor ones and bad ones. Now everybody wants to be the excellent horse or the good horse, but nobody wants to be the dead-last, bad horse. He suggests that the bad horse has to work extra hard to learn how to run, to learn how to do things, right?
Continue Reading "What Kind of Statistical Horse Are You?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
The gold standard of photography when I was growing up was Kodachrome, but you had to carefully compose your shot to get the best photos. Then you had to wait to get it developed only to discover that most of your photos were poor. Digital cameras changed all that. The same applies to Six Sigma Charts. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“Paul Simon wrote a song about Kodachrome; when I was a kid, originally it was black and white film, but then we got Kodachrome color film that you could make really beautiful slides and everything with.
Continue Reading "Kodachrome and Quality Charts"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
Most Six Sigma statistics rely on p values. But statisticians have been raising alarm about the problems with p values. Here’s what’s going on:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“I get these emails about different courses that are being offered (I think one on Coursera) but it was one on statistics and it was “To P or Not to P That is the Question.”
“Have you been watching anything in the statistics world? Statisticians think that P values can be misleading and potentially dangerous.
Continue Reading "To P or Not to P"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
I learned how to type on a manual typewriter 50 years ago. I still type the same way. Old habits are hard to break. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“Back when I was a teenager, my mother was convinced that I needed to learn how to type and so I took a summer typing course at the high school. We had those old Remington manual typewriters, right? We had to whack the key to make it fly up there and hit that ribbon hard enough that you would make a decent impression on the paper.
Continue Reading "Old Habits are Hard to Break"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
I’ve been building software for over 50 years. There are some secrets to software quality that are often overlooked. Here’s a few:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I’ve spent almost my entire life working in software and software development, from mainframes to minicomputers to microcomputers, ultimately leading to the QI Macros. I’ll tell you what, I took a course a long time ago from T. Capers Jones where we studied what makes software maintainable and unmaintainable. It turns out how many decision points you have in a given module determines how testable and maintainable it can be.
Continue Reading "Software Code Quality"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
People keep asking me if Six Sigma applies only to manufacturing. Nope. You can even use it to improve your golf game.
(You can download my free “Six Sigma Golf” pamphlet by clicking HERE.)
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I was at the American Society for Quality’s Lean Six Sigma conference down in Phoenix a few weeks ago, and one guy said, “Aren’t you the guy that wrote Six Sigma Golf?” I said “Yeah!” I [wrote] that book a long time ago. Nobody brought it up for a long time, but I said yeah; I was reading Dave Pelz’ “Putting [Bible]” and “Short Game Bible.”
Continue Reading "Using Six Sigma to Improve Your Golf Game"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
People often ask if QI Macros is in competition with Minitab. No, I tell them. We are both in competition with a common enemy. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I was at the American Society for Quality Lean Six Sigma conference, and my booth for QI Macros was right next to Minitab. You know, people are always asking me, “Jay, do you guys compete with Minitab?” I say, “No, we compete with ignorance and apathy.”
“Number one, people don’t know how these tools could help them, whether it’s me or Minitab.
Continue Reading "Does QI Macros® Compete with Minitab?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
