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Statistical textbooks disagree on what constitutes Control Chart Rule 2 – Zone A: 2 of 3 points above/below 2 sigma. Which one is right?
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation – Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“Got a call from a customer this week. He was all upset because of control chart rule two, which is about having points above two sigma or below two sigma (two out of three).
“Well, guess what? Some people in their books say those two points have to be on the same side of the center line.
Continue Reading "Control Chart Rules"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Old habits die hard. Especially in Six Sigma. Which ones are you hanging on to?
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation – Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“The other day I was in with my employee Phil and he had to send a text to a customer or something, or read a text from a customer. I noticed as he was typing, he was just skating on the keyboard and then doing things. And I thought, “Wow, that’s different.”
Continue Reading "Old Habits Die Hard"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
In the last century, we trained people on run charts to prepare them for control charts. Why are we still doing it? What does it cost us?
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation – Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“In the last century, calculating the center lines and control limits and everything for control charts was difficult. And so to make it simple, we started off with simply doing a center line, an average or median to get people used to the idea of calculating something.
Continue Reading "Why Start With Run Charts?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
When your Kleenex box tissues don’t pop up, what do you do? Use TRIZ.
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation – Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I don’t know about you, but some things sort of bother me, like sometimes the Kleenex gets stuck down in there, you know. You could try and run your hand down in there to pull something out, but that screws up all the plastic in here.
“But I was thinking about TRIZ, and there’s 40-some-odd different rules for coming up with better ways to do something.
Continue Reading "Kleenex Box Hack Using TRIZ"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
I’ve been attending ASQ Lean Six Sigma conferences and attending sessions on AI. Here’s what I’ve learned.
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation – Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Let’s talk about AI for a minute. I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified,” “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I’ve been to a lot of conferences. I’ve gone to a lot of presentations on AI, and they all say, “Here’s what AI is,” but I haven’t seen any real good case studies and examples of what people are using it for.
Continue Reading "AI and Six Sigma"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
I was stunned when a QI Macros user at the IHI conference told me: “QI Macros saves lives.” I love these stories.
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation – Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I was at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement conference and one of the attendees, one of our users, came up and said, “QI Macros is doing really good work in the world. QI Macros is saving lives.” And that kind of stunned me, right?
Continue Reading "QI Macros Saves Lives"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
People ask me if QI Macros can generate random samples or do sampling and I say no. Excel’s Data Analysis Toolpak can already do that. Discover how:
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation – Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“People call in sometimes and say, ‘Do you have a tool in QI Macros to do random samples of data?’ I say, ‘No, because that’s already built into Excel. I try not to do anything Excel really does naturally.’ Most people are unaware that there’s a Data Analysis Tool Pack and you can add that into Excel and you can do things like create sample data with plus or minus so many standard deviations.
Continue Reading "Discover Excel’s Data Analysis Toolpak"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Software complexity can be measured by the number of decisions and steps in a given module of code. The same is true of processes.
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation – Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“Back when I was in software development way back in the 80s, there was a whole movement among software developers to look at how do we measure programmer productivity, software complexity and so on. There was a metric called McCabe Cyclomatic Complexity that said if you have more than 10 decisions in any given module, it starts to become unmaintainable.
Continue Reading "What’s Your Process Complexity?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
People ask: Should I use a p or u chart, or XmR chart? Which one is right? It depends…
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation – Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“One of the things I’ve noticed is I get calls from people and they ask me, “Well, Jay, should we be using a p [chart] and u charts or an XmR chart of ratios?” And I can tell you: that depends on who your statistician leader is.
“If you’re looking at the Healthcare Data Guide, Lloyd Provost and his partner [Sandra Murray] love p and u charts… love them!
Continue Reading "p/u Charts or XmR Charts?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
I took Deming’s workshop back in the 1990s. When asked about Total Quality Management (TQM) Deming said…
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation – Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“Back in the 1990s when I was first getting involved with Quality, I went to one of [W. Edwards] Deming‘s four-day seminars. Somewhere in there, somebody asked him about Total Quality Management.
“Deming said, ‘I have no idea where the word ‘total’ came from. That’s just wrong. It’s Quality Management.
Continue Reading "Deming on Total Quality Management (TQM)"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
