Improvement Insights Blog
Are You Using the Tools of Quality?
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. Most of them don’t [show] a goodness of fit metric, and none of them are control charts, which would tell you instantaneously if it’s on target or not on target.
“I think this is our problem: People are hesitant to go out and get the tools they need to do the job that’s going to make you a lot more successful.
“So that’s my Improvement Insight for this week: Don’t trust trend lines, they’re just fake news. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”
