I fell in love with Lean Six Sigma almost 30 years ago…but it takes some work to stay in love with Lean Six Sigma.
Are you willing to do what it takes to make Lean Six Sigma your Valentine?
Continue Reading "Have You Fallen In Love With Lean Six Sigma?"
I have been thinking for some time that someone would come along, start buying up hospitals and forcing them to adopt the Lean principles of Amazon and Six Sigma to achieve the “science and evidence” that Don Berwick has been challenging the IHI to adopt.
Warren Buffet has the money, but usually invests in “well-run” companies, not ones in trouble. An estimated half of all hospitals are in financial trouble (often because of the lack of Lean Six Sigma).
Bezos and Amazon have the operational efficiency needed in virtually all healthcare environments.
Dimon has a big bank.
They are all worried about the quality of healthcare and the rising costs.
Continue Reading "Hospital Costs a “Hungry Tapeworm on U.S. Economy” says Warren Buffett"
I started using TurboTax to do my taxes years ago. I used to gather up my 1099s and W-2 and everything else and spend a whole day doing my taxes. Your taxes may not be as complicated as mine, but think of these forms as “work in process” (WIP). I was doing them in a big batch just before the filing deadline.
Then I started using a Lean approach. Whenever a W-9 or 1099 arrives in the mailbox, I input it into the software. By mid-March when the business taxes are finished, everything is in and my taxes are ready to file.
Are you wasting time in Six Sigma on unnecessary steps?
Here’s how to kick start your improvement efforts.
Everyone seems to think that top down, leadership-driven is the only way to implement Lean Six Sigma. It’s not.
50 years of research proves that it fails half the time. Yep, 50% failure rate. That’s less than 1 sigma.
This type of failure is so common that it even has a name: The Stalinist Paradox.
May-June 2017 HBR discusses the results of a 10-year study of what makes CEOs great.
Of the four traits, number 4, Delivering Reliably, was found to be the most powerful of the four essential behaviors. Reliable CEOs were 15 times more likely to succeed.
I have found that one of the most effective ways to deliver reliably is to use Lean Six Sigma to simplify, streamline and optimize performance.
Early in the movie, the McDonald’s brothers describe how they came up with the concept for speedy service. It’s Lean.
They had too many menu items, so they decide to simplify down to burgers, fries and soft drinks. (Think Lean inventory.)
They go to a tennis court and use chalk to lay out a possible floor plan to deliver service fast. One brother stands on a ladder watching while the employees pantomime cooking burgers, fries and soft drinks.
They go through several iterations to converge on their final design. (Think value stream mapping and spaghetti diagramming.)
I think they might have done it faster with cardboard boxes, but I wasn’t there.
October 2016 HBR article, Why Leadership Training Fails-and What to Do About It, calls the $160 Billion spent on training in the U.S. the Great Training Robbery. The authors say: “Learning doesn’t lead to better organizational performance, because people soon revert to their old ways of doing things.”
Unfortunately, this is true of most Six Sigma training courses. If you don’t apply what you’ve learned immediately to reducing delay, defects and deviation, the learning is lost in 72 hours.
That’s why my Lean Six Sigma workshops focus on solving real problems using existing data. Once people connect the methods and tools to results, it’s hard to go backward.
I got a call from a QI Macros customer who works at a luxury car dealership. Customers were upset because their cars were spending too long in the shop. The dealership tracked the length of stay of every car, the symptoms and barriers to getting the car done when expected.
I was struck by the similarities between what he was describing and a hospital. Patients come in, get diagnosed, treated, admitted and eventually discharged. This is the same problem as the maintenance shop.
I asked if the maintenance department had information about the type of problem, missing parts, age of the car and so on.
KnowWare International, Inc.
2696 S. Colorado Blvd., Ste. 555
Denver, CO 80222 USA
Toll-Free: 1-888-468-1537
Local: (303) 756-9144
