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In every town there are locations that emerge as gathering places for people who share similar interests. The musicians in an area might tend to congregate at certain establishments; fans of a particular sports team at other spots, etc. In my area, there’s a place where statisticians and Quality Improvement people go: Pareto’s Big Bar.
As a Freelance Quality Improvement Specialist, I tend to be grouped in with the Q.I. people, but I count quite a few statisticians from that place as friends. My interactions at Pareto’s Big Bar have been less of the “in person” type and more of the “takeout or delivery food” type in recent months, so I miss the comradery and the friendly (if sometimes loud) discussions with other patrons about disputed topics such as Standard Deviation vs.
Continue Reading "Pepperoni, Sausage… and Lutefisk?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in QI Macros Monthly Newsletters.
COVID Vaccine Appointment websites are poorly designed. They force millions of people to hack their way through page after page only to discover there are no appointments. What could they do instead, and how can you adopt these Lean principles to your website?
“Well, hi, I’m Jay Arthur, the author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“Now, I’m an old IT guy, so I’ve been doing this for 60 odd years, ever since high school. But one of the things that irritates me is just poor design. And so, I recently was able to start getting involved with trying to find a COVID vaccine appointment, as I’m over 65 years old here in Colorado.
Continue Reading "Lean approach to COVID Vaccine appointment websites"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, Improvement Insights, Lean.
Jay Arthur was the featured speaker for the 3/25/21 ASQ Kitchener Section 405 meeting. His topic was “Agile Lean Six Sigma.” You may view the recorded video of Jay’s webinar below:
If you’re interested in learning more about QI Macros for Excel (the software Jay wrote and developed), click HERE and view the demo video in the yellow box. You may also sign up for a free 30 day trial of the software by filling out the form on that page next to the video, or by signing up at THIS link.
If you’re interested in learning more about Jay’s ideas on Agile Lean Six Sigma, you can download a free brief summary of Jay’s ideas in his “Agile Lean Six Sigma Manifesto,” available at THIS link.
Continue Reading "ASQ Kitchener Section 405 – Agile Lean Six Sigma"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma.
Jay Arthur was a featured speaker for the 3/25/21 Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence Conference. His topic was “Agile Lean Six Sigma.” You may view the recorded video of Jay’s webinar below:
If you’re interested in learning more about QI Macros for Excel (the software Jay wrote and developed), click HERE and view the demo video in the yellow box. You may also sign up for a free 30 day trial of the software by filling out the form on that page next to the video, or by signing up at THIS link.
If you’re interested in learning more about Jay’s ideas on Agile Lean Six Sigma, you can download a free brief summary of Jay’s ideas in his “Agile Lean Six Sigma Manifesto,” available at THIS link.
Continue Reading "TNCPE – Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence – Agile LSS"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma.
Sometimes the language of Six Sigma is off-putting. I have found one way to get people’s attention is to use plain English to describe their product or service.
“Your product or service suffers from three key problems: It’s either Lazy, Crappy or Whacky.
“Lazy: Your product takes long breaks, goes out to lunch, spends the night on the town, comes in in the morning a little bit hungover… it’s not your people, it’s your product. If you watch your product, your people are busy but your product is hanging out, taking its time, sitting around having a cup of coffee.
Continue Reading "Is Your Product or Service Lazy, Crappy or Whacky?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Manufacturing, Service.
Most people are terrified of “statistical” anything. Do you think SPC is too complex? You may not like the alternative.
“Whenever I talk to people about Statistical Process Control, first the word “statistical” scares the living crap out of them. But they say, “Well, you know, uh… I’m not that good with math and formulas,” and I say, “Well, you don’t have to know math and formulas. We’ve got software that’ll do all that for you. What you have to do is know what the chart tells you about what you should do about your process. They’re all a little surprised.
Continue Reading "Think SPC is Too Complex?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma, Statistics.
Jay Arthur was the featured speaker for the 3/10/21 ASQ Lean Enterprise Division Web Meeting. His topic was “Turning Data Into Dollars with Microsoft Excel – Big Profits from Small Data.” You may view the recorded video of Jay’s webinar below:
If you’re interested in learning more about QI Macros for Excel (the software Jay wrote and developed), click HERE and view the demo video in the yellow box. You may also sign up for a free 30 day trial of the software by filling out the form on that page next to the video, or by signing up at THIS link.
Continue Reading "ASQ Lean Enterprise Division 3/10/21 Web Meeting"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Excel, Manufacturing, Webinar.
Over 125 people signed up for this webinar, with Jay Arthur demonstrating some of the software’s most frequently used tools and answering questions asked by attendees.
Some attendees were familiar with the software and already use it, some had only begun to use it; all were interested in learning new ways that QI Macros can help them with their Agile Lean Six Sigma and Quality Improvement efforts. (You can hear him answering questions and comments typed in by webinar attendees.)
If you saw a feature demonstrated in the webinar that might have been added to QI Macros after the version you’re using (for instance, the Improvement Project Wizard, the Fixed Limit indicator or the automated Process Change Wizard), you may need to purchase an upgrade to bring your QI Macros to the current version.
Continue Reading "3/9/21 QI Macros webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Data Mining, Excel, QI Macros, Webinar.
The pandemic has given us terms like “herd immunity.” Wouldn’t it be great if we could develop herd immunity to defects? Here’s how:
Agile Process Innovation E-Book
“You know, with the pandemic they keep talking about wanting to achieve herd immunity: Herd immunity so that the virus has no place to go. Wouldn’t that be cool?
“But then I started thinking about “Wouldn’t it be great if we could develop herd immunity to defects, mistakes, errors, waste and rework?” What if everybody was immune to that? What if we had different…? We do have vaccines; I mean, we have procedures, methods, tools and everything else to help people achieve a totally “no rework, no waste, no nada” kind of environment.
Continue Reading "Herd Immunity to Defects"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights.
Over 60 people attended this North Carolina Association of Healthcare Quality (NCAHQ) webinar on how to achieve the IHI’s Trillion Dollar Checkbook goal of reducing healthcare waste by $500 billion/year by 2025.
https://www.qimacros.com/pdf/Zero-Harm-Trillion-Dollar-Prescription.pdf If you saw a feature demonstrated in the webinar that might have been added to QI Macros after the version you’re using (for instance, the Templates Wizard, the Fixed Limit indicator or the automated Process Change Wizard), you may need to purchase an upgrade to bring your QI Macros to the current version. Send an email to support@qimacros.com and we can help, for instance in generating a quote to upgrade all the users at your organization or just guiding you through the purchasing process.
Continue Reading "03/05/21 NCAHQ Zero Harm – Trillion Dollar Prescription Webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Healthcare, Lean, Six Sigma, Webinar.
