Six Sigma Blog by Jay Arthur

Improvement Insights Blog

Latest "Six Sigma" Posts

Six Sigma Project Birthdays

If you have to throw a birthday party for your improvement project because it isn’t complete, you’re not alone, but you’ve lost sight of the outcome.

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].

“At the Lean Six Sigma World Conference I heard another phrase that I had never heard before: “Project Birthdays.” What? A project that has lasted so long, a year later it’s having a birthday and it’s still not done yet. In one of the studies the Green Belt teams had as long as 16 months to complete a project.

“Now, I hate to tell you this but if you have something that looks like it might have a project birthday, somehow you didn’t laser focus your improvement and get it improved, because with the right kind of data, the right kind of focus, you can do that in a day or sometimes a week.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.

Six Sigma Unicorns

One session at the Lean Six Sigma World conference presented findings from of a study of successful Lean Six Sigma implementations. If you think your company can become a unicorn, watch now:

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].

“I was in San Antonio at the Lean Six Sigma World Conference and there was a presentation by a couple of consultants about a study they’d done on successful Lean and Six Sigma deployments. Now, unfortunately it was a little skewed, because the minimum size of the company was 150 million dollars going up to about 750 million dollars, so you have Fortune 500 companies with deep pockets.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.

Are Limiting Beliefs Stopping Your Improvement Projects?

Everyone has limiting beliefs and they could be stopping your improvement projects. Here’s why and what to do about it.  

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software]. I want to talk to you about something that sounds a little bit out of the Six Sigma ballpark.

“One of the things I’ve noticed is people will develop limiting beliefs about what’s possible. They’ll say, “Well, I can’t fix that because…” or “I can’t do this because my boss won’t let me,” or “I can’t do this because management doesn’t understand control charts, performance charts,” …or whatever.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.

Are You Hesitating to Improve?

Lots of people hesitate to get started on improvements. Here’s why and what to do about it.

“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].

“I have noticed that a lot of people, when they get trained in Six Sigma or whatever, they hesitate to get started. You know it’s like, “I’m afraid of not doing it right,” or “I’m afraid of not tackling the right problem,” or “I’m afraid of somebody [making me feel] stupid or somebody criticizing what I’m doing,” or whatever it is…

“Well, I hate to tell you this, but you have to be bad to start, right?

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Six Sigma.

Speed Learning for Minimally Invasive Training

How can you help people learn Lean Six Sigma quickly and easily? It’s a simple three step process that will slash the learning curve for everyone.

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].

“In a recent video I talked to you about the whole idea of “minimally invasive training.” How do we teach people in an hour everything they need to know to start solving problems? To do that you have to think about all the advances that we know about in speed learning.

“If I’m teaching Lean what do I do? First I tell them a story of how I’ve used post-it notes to reduce cycle time by 50%, 60%, 80%, 90% in something.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma.

Minimally Invasive Lean Six Sigma Training

One big pharma company embraced a more Agile approach to implementing Lean Six Sigma and achieved quick results. How did they do it?

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].

“I was at the Lean Six Sigma conference for ASQ in Phoenix and Novartis gave a whole presentation about implementing Lean and Six Sigma around their sales process. It turns out they didn’t actually apply Lean and Six Sigma to the sales process, they simply optimized everything around it that supported their reps going out into the field and how the reps got paid, but they didn’t really do anything about the sales process.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.

4/23/19 Agile Lean Six Sigma Webinar

Almost 50 people signed up for this webinar to hear Jay Arthur’s take on the 20th century origins of Lean and Six Sigma, and where he feels it’s headed in the 21st century.



Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Data Mining, Lean, Six Sigma, Webinar.

Living Exponentially

The job description of the future doesn’t involve manual labor or basic thinking skills. The future will challenge all of us. Here’s why.

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].

“At the ASQ Lean Six Sigma conference there was an opening keynote about the acceleration, the exponential acceleration of technology; how it’s just so much faster, so much quicker, so much… it’s just {whooshing up sound}, right? And the costs are going {whooshing down sound}, and so that’s a dramatic shift from how it used to be.Even Six Sigma used to [have to] make charts manually and do stuff like that, but that’s not how it is any more, so he suggested that you think about it in this map.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.

Accelerating Lean Six Sigma Exponentially

At the ASQ Lean Six Sigma Conference in Phoenix, they said that the world is accelerating exponentially. Is Lean Six Sigma accelerating exponentially? If we use Agile methods to accelerate Lean Six Sigma, we can move Lean Six Sigma into the 21st century.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.

2/12/19 Agile Lean Six Sigma Webinar



Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Lean, Six Sigma, Webinar.