Lean Blog by Jay Arthur

How Many Green and Black Belts Do You Need?

A QI Macros customer recently asked: ” What is a reasonable and productive ratio of Lean or Six Sigma expert (LSSBB, for example) to staff for a healthcare organization that is starting the journey?”

The general consensus I can find online about Six Sigma belts/employees is:
1 BB/100 employees
3 GB/100 employees

I think these numbers are designed to keep Six Sigma training companies in business.

Depending on the size of a Medical center, you could use one BB and some GBs to get started. You can’t fix everything all at once, so one BB ramrodding a handful of GBs to solve key problems would be a good start.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Lean, Service, Six Sigma.

Vanity or Productivity Metrics

Vanity metrics let you feel good about your business.

Productivity metrics tell you the truth about your business. From Running Lean, by Ash Maurya via the Lean Startup, here’s some productivity metrics:

Acquisition (how do users find you?)
Activation (do they have a great first experience?)
Retention (do they return?)
Revenue (how do you make money?)
Referral (do users tell others?).

Most people want to feel good, so they often select metrics that let them feel good. The people that excel choose metrics that tell them where and how to improve.

You can chart either one with the QI Macros, but vanity charts aren’t going to help you improve.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Lean, QI Macros.

Dermatology Group Boosts Coding Accuracy from 65.4% to 91.7%

In a matter of months, an NC dermatology group boosted insurance coding accuracy saving $65,000.
http://www.msochealth.com/lean-six-sigma-dermatology-practice/

While most of the healthcare quality focus is on hospitals, there’s a huge opportunity to make doctor’s offices more effective and efficient. In this case, better coding results in faster payment of insurance claims. Offices can use Lean to reduce patient wait times and increase volume resulting in more revenue and better patient care.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Lean, Service, Six Sigma.

The Art of Subtraction

In Matthew May’s new book, The Laws of Subtraction (McGraw-Hill 2013), he outlines some key concepts refined from his years with Toyota:

At the heart of every difficult decision lie three tough choices:

What to pursue versus what to ignore.
What to leave in versus what to leave out.
What to do versus what to don’t.

The key is to remove the stupid stuff: anything obviously excessive, confusing, wasteful, unnatural, hazardous, hard to use or ugly. This is the art of subtraction.

Isn’t that the core of Lean?

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Lean, Manufacturing, Service.

Why Retailers Lose Money

My wife ordered a set of monogrammed bath robes for our daughter and son-in-law from RedEnvelope. When they arrived, she checked them (unnecessaryinspection)…no monograms.

So she called (rework) and they told her to keep the two unmonogrammed ones (waste) and they would send two monogrammed ones.

A couple of days later, we did get two monogrammed bath robes (rework). The next day we got two more and the day after that we got two more (waste and rework). When we called (rework), they said, don’t return them because they’ve been monogrammed already.

So now, we have eight robes for the price of two.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog, Lean, Service, Six Sigma.

PSA Test – a Public Health Disaster

Dr. Richard J. Albin, creator of the PSA test for prostate cancer, says that the devastating consequences treatments including surgery and radiation therapy caused:

5,000 deaths soon after surgery
up to 70,000 serious complications
50% had persistent blood in their semen
up to 300,000 suffered impotence, incontinence or both.

He now calls the widespread use of the PSA test a “Public Health Disaster.” As a result of these findings, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force will recommend that healthy men no longer receive PSA testing.

Unnecessary tests and treatments of all kinds are estimated to cost $250 Billion in the U.S.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Lean, Service, Six Sigma.

Toyota’s Global Data Mining

Last week, Toyota unveiled it’s multimillion dollar system for gather repair reports, complaints and safety concerns from dealerships, internet sites and other sources into one system and mine that data for problems beyond the doors of the factory. The WSJ reported that EVP Shinichi Sasaki said that Toyota had succumbed to ‘Big Company Disease’.

It happens. Big or small, companies shift their focus to bottom-line benefits or growth and drop the ball on quality. But, as I’ve predicted for awhile, Toyota’s quality culture is repairing itself and resuming the quest for quality; now on a global basis.

What are you doing to monitor your quality on a global basis?

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Lean, Manufacturing, Six Sigma.