Home »
Blog » Jay Arthur Blog
Improvement Insights Blog
Latest "Jay Arthur Blog" Posts
Over 120 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.
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 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 "1/9/24 QI Macros webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog.
Over 40 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.
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 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 "9/12/23 QI Macros webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog.
Purchasing departments are sluggish and error-prone. Joseph Juran used the tools of quality to simplify, streamline and optimize Lend-Lease purchasing during WWII. You can too.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I was wandering through my old collection of Quality Progress magazines. This one’s from 2004, it was about a hundred years of Juran. Now, he was born in Romania in 1904 and immigrated to the Minneapolis region at about 12 years of age. I was reading through this, and one of the things in here struck me: during the war, he used his statistical skills and engineering to improve purchasing, budgeting and paperwork gridlock for Lend-Lease.
Continue Reading "Juran – Purchasing Improvement for Lend-Lease"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
Here’s three simple signs that you need Lean Six Sigma.
“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“There’s three clear signs that you need Six Sigma.
“[1:] First off, you spend more time fixing stuff than you do actually making stuff.
“[2:] Customer complaints have risen to an all-time high and you spend too much time dealing with that.
“[3:] You spend more time mending fences than plowing new fields. You know, that’s a clue that these tools can help you.
“That’s my Improvement Insight for this week.
Continue Reading "Three Signs that You Need Lean Six Sigma"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
Most people think Quality Improvement is hard. It’s not. It’s surprisingly easy. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I think too many people spend a lot of time pretending that Quality Improvement is hard; it’s not, right? You’re either out of control but you might be in spec, or you might be in spec and out of control, or… in control and out of spec, or you can be in control and in spec. That’s not too hard.
“You know, with a handful of tools you can solve most of the problems involving defects, mistakes, errors.
Continue Reading "Quality Improvement is Not Hard"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
Over 70 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.
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 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 "7/11/23 QI Macros webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog.
Most quality improvement professionals have long forgotten how hard it was to learn QI. What if you could help newbies overcome the frustration barrier?
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“I was out at the American Society for Quality conference last week in scenic Philadelphia. One of the things that I’ve noticed is when we talk to people, most people forget how hard it was initially to get through the frustration barrier to learn Quality when they began. They forget how hard it is. Just like childbirth, women forget how much it hurt; they just… “Oh, yeah, I got a baby.”
Continue Reading "Overcome the Frustration Barrier"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog, QI Macros.
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.
Continue Reading "Are You Using the Tools of Quality?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
If you’re creating every process in your business from scratch, you may be wasting time and missing opportunities to make your system mistake-proof. Here’s what I mean:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“Way back when I was at Bell Laboratories, we were building a new software system that scheduled how many transmission lines ran between point A and point B all over the country. The problem was we had a lot to do and very little time to do it in, and so we started working on what I call “reuse,” which is where you create something but then it can be reused endlessly.
Continue Reading "Make Something Reusable!"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
Shunryū Suzuki said there are four kinds of horses: excellent, good, poor and bad horses. When it comes to statistics, the bad horse may be the best horse. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“Shunryū Suzuki said there are four kinds of horses: Excellent ones, good ones, poor ones and bad ones. Now everybody wants to be the excellent horse or the good horse, but nobody wants to be the dead-last, bad horse. He suggests that the bad horse has to work extra hard to learn how to run, to learn how to do things, right?
Continue Reading "What Kind of Statistical Horse Are You?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
