Improvement Insights Blog
Just Fill Out Those Forms
Quality management systems have lots of forms. Don’t complain, just do it.
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“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“When I was at US West (the phone company), it seemed like every week, somebody would come up with some new standardized form that we had to fill out to get something done. Everybody else would bitch and moan about it, and I would just go grind my way through it, and fill it out and be done with it.
“I want to encourage all of you that if you’re doing something like ISO or stuff, there’s going to be forms and systems and standardized work and you may hate that standardized work, but get over it. Just fill it out and be done, right? It’s usually not too complicated. And then you you’ve dotted the ‘I’s, crossed the ‘t’s, and created documentation so that people who come after you can do something with what you’ve got. Even in software, I have comments and code to help understand what’s going on in the software. It reminds me that if somebody else had to maintain my code… they’d be able to do it as well.
“So, that’s my Improvement Insight. Don’t haggle with forms and standardized work, just do it. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”
