Improvement Insights Blog
Are You Using Excel as a Paperweight?
Are you just using Excel for spreadsheets or line and bar charts?
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“Most of the people I see out there are using Excel kind of like as a paperweight or something. Nobody wants to read your spreadsheet but people keep inventing spreadsheets. They use merge and center to center titles and stuff like that, and they type all their numbers in here. You can do that on Google Sheets. If that’s all you want to do, use Google Sheets.
“But Excel is a power tool. You can do incredible things with it. That’s the great thing about QI Macros: It really makes Excel be a power tool for Lean and Six Sigma for control charts, Pareto charts, histograms, fishbones, flow charts… whatever it is.
“There was a healthcare company up in the mountains, and they had an outlet for winter sports [injuries]. They had so many people coming in internationally and getting bunged up that they would treat them, but they could not issue an invoice. Their systems were so old and cumbersome, they couldn’t do it. So I actually built in Excel a little invoicing system: you click buttons, you hit a button and then it comes up with an invoice. You can pay it now and save 35% or pay it later. Guess what? They started getting an extra $100,000 a month.
“Excel’s an incredible power tool. Don’t just use spreadsheets – nobody wants to read them. Don’t just use line and bar charts because they’re available. Right? Come into this century. Start using control charts, Pareto charts and histograms to monitor what’s going on and improve. Focus, Improve, Sustain… keep doing that forever.
“That’s my Improvement Insight. Let’s start using Excel as the power tool it’s meant to be.”