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My career was dipped in various management methods such as MBO and MBWA. Recently I read a new term: Management by Spreadsheet (MBS). Maybe there’s a better way.
“When I was working at the phone company we had a variety of management fads. I think first there was MBO, or “Management By Objectives.” Of course, that assumed that you know what your objectives were. We had MBWA, “Management By Wandering Around,” so the management team was wandering around all the time and just getting in our way. Recently I saw a different phraseology and I kind of liked it: MBS, which stands for “Management By Spreadsheet.”
“You know, if you think about it, there’s very few people who can actually read a spreadsheet and get intelligence out of it.
Continue Reading "Management By Control Chart"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
There’s still time to register for this afternoon’s FREE QI Macros webinar, January 9th at 1:00PM MST. Sign up by clicking THIS link.
IHI set a goal to reduce healthcare waste by 50% by 2025. Here’s how to do it with the Trillion Dollar Prescription.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals.” We were just out at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement conference in Orlando, Florida. [There were] like, 4500 medical doctors and nurses and CNO’s and CNMO’s and people all involved in improving healthcare quality. This is their 31st annual conference. (I can tell you based on what I was looking at on the posters, people are not really aggressively going after change…)
“The IHI announced that it’s tackling what they call the “Trillion-Dollar Checkbook.” Their goal is to cut health care waste by 50% by 2025 – that’s five years from now.
Continue Reading "IHI’s Trillion Dollar Aim – Reduce Healthcare Waste by 50% by 2025"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, healthcare, Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
What do Christus Health, Novartis and Underwriters Laboratories have in common? In the last few years they’ve rediscovered the essence of Agile Lean Six Sigma. Here’s How:
“Every year we go out to these conferences and trade shows and exhibit the QI Macros, and I get a chance to go see some of the presentations that people are doing. About two years ago I started to notice an interesting trend, and so I got some observations out of this whole thing.
“So about two years ago, I was at the Lean Six Sigma conference in Phoenix and Christus Health was presenting about their quality journey.
Continue Reading "Agile Process Innovation Case Studies"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
Some people think they have to climb Mount Everest or do a fire walk to overcome their fears. Maybe it’s just as easy to do the thing you are afraid to do in your normal life. Maybe it’s time to climb Mount Quality. Maybe it’s time to create a hassle-free experience for your company’s customers.
“My wife’s been watching these shows about people climbing Mount Everest. You see people, they’re waiting for the final the final [ascent] and there’s a huge queue of people waiting to go up to the top of Mount Everest… (It’s like [maybe] they should put in an express lane or something!) It [seems] like everybody’s doing it.
Continue Reading "Climbing Mount Quality"
Posted by Jay Arthur in healthcare, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
A recent report from NAHQ (National Association of Healthcare Quality) found that three-quarters of hospitals had a quality department. But to achieve hassle-free healthcare and zero harm, it will take more than a department to achieve the results desired.
“The National Association for Healthcare Quality just released a report on Quality professionals in health care, and it turns out that in a lot of the situations, about three-quarters of the people responding reported that in their hospital or wherever, that Quality was a department, and in about a quarter [of the responses] Quality was individuals working on stuff.
“Let me be clear about this: Quality is not a department.
Continue Reading "Quality Is Not a Department"
Posted by Jay Arthur in healthcare, Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
Several attendees told me they had ripped out their line charts and started using Control Charts for their KPIs. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“We were out at the National Association for Healthcare Quality conference; I was speaking and we were exhibiting there. After I spoke, I had a couple people come up to me who said they’d seen me at the previous year’s convention talking about how to improve things and how line [charts] and bar charts can be harming patients and they said, “You know, I went back to my hospital and we ripped out all of our line charts and we put in control charts for all of our key process indicators.
Continue Reading "Control Charts for KPIs"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, healthcare, Improvement Insights, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
No matter how well you design something using DFSS, users will find ways to use it or break it in ways you can’t imagine!
“In Six Sigma we have all these tools for designing for Six Sigma, so we have Quality Function Deployment and Failure Modes and Effects Analysis and all this other stuff; PPAP forms in automotive to help you design an entire sub-assembly or whatever it is… but what are these things designed to do?
“Well, they’re designed to help you come up with something that’ll come out at least a four signal level, maybe a four and a half signal level, but one of the things I’ve learned from software is “No design survives contact with the end user.” Somehow, they find ways to break stuff that you hadn’t even thought of, right?
Continue Reading "No Design Survives Contact with the End User"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog, Lean, Six Sigma.
I love people who fight the good fight of quality improvement. Problem solving isn’t sexy, but it’s vital to corporate health. Hugs!
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur. If you’ve been watching my Improvement Insight videos, you’re probably going, “Gee, Jay, you’re sharing all this stuff… What’s that all about?”
“Well, it turns out if you don’t know it by now… I love people who do Quality Improvement. They’re out chasing the big ugly things that are causing too much hassle in America and trying to eliminate them and eliminate waste and eliminate all the stuff that goes into landfills and into sewers and all kinds of stuff like this.
Continue Reading "I Love Improvers"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog, Lean, Six Sigma.
There are a number of fears that make people hesitant to share data and or let you make improvements. Here’s why.
“Not everybody is in love with this whole idea of improvement. There are people who, when you come to them and say, “I need your data about such-and-such,” they don’t want you looking at their data because they don’t want to look stupid. If they’re the manager of that organization and they’ve had all this data and they can’t find what I call the “invisible low-hanging fruit,” they think that they’re stupid or something. No, they just don’t know how to analyze the data.
Continue Reading "Not Everyone Likes Quality Improvement"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog, Lean, Six Sigma.
While some European cities were devastated by fire, Holland has had to deal with flooding. What have they done to mistake-proof flooding since 1953?
“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software]. “I recently had an Improvement Insight video about how they were burning down the capitals of Scandinavia repeatedly until the king said “Thou shalt build thy buildings out of stone” and so that stopped the fire problem. I discovered there was a 60 Minutes article on a recent Sunday, and they were talking about Holland.
“Back in the 50s there was a massive flood and it tore down a lot of barriers because a lot of Holland is below sea level.
Continue Reading "Flood-Proofing in Holland"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog, Lean, Six Sigma.
