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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.
Continue Reading "Why Retailers Lose Money"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog, Lean, Service, Six Sigma.
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.
Continue Reading "PSA Test – a Public Health Disaster"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Lean, Service, Six Sigma.
The March 2011 Wired magazine article identifies a new trend in manufacturing: insourcing. An MFG.com survey found that 19% of companies had brought all or part of their manufacturing back to North America. US manufacturing added 136,000 jobs in 2010, the first increase since 1997.
While many small to medium sized businesses moved their manufacturing to China in the early part of the last decade, many are finding benefits from moving production back to the USA:
- Rising labor costs in China are making the USA more cost competitive. China wages more than doubled between 2002-2008.
- Sheer distance “remains an intractable problem.”
Continue Reading "Insourcing Manufacturing"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Six Sigma.
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?
Continue Reading "Toyota’s Global Data Mining"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Lean, Manufacturing, Six Sigma.
Last week, we exhibited at the Magnet conference for nursing quality. Every healthcare quality conference has posters about improvement projects: Magnet, NAHQ, and IHI. What struck me about these posters was the shortage of quality tools like control charts, pareto charts and fishbone diagrams. Those posters using charts often used the incorrect type of chart for the data.
Here’s an example. This chart has so many lines on it, how can you tell what story they are trying to tell?
Here’s an example using a bar chart (instead of a line graph) and the dates are in reverse order:
Here’s another bar chart with the dates in the correct order, but again, time series charts like this one should be shown as a line, run or control chart.
Continue Reading "Magnet Improvement Posters"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Six Sigma.
BusinessWeek Sept. 20-26, 2010 calls UPS managers “efficiency freaks.” USP began equiping trucks with sensors for everything from brake pad wear to engine efficiencies. This data has helped reduce gas consumption by 25 gallons per year per truck.
Doesn’t sound like much until you realize that UPS has an estimated 95,000 vehicles which means saving almost 2,500,000 gallons per year. Multiply that by $2.50/gallon to get a $6+ million dollar savings. And it makes for a greener planet.
Maybe we could all benefit from more “efficiency freaks.”
Continue Reading "UPS Efficiency Freaks"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Service, Six Sigma.
After the recent terrorist attempt on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, some zealous, knee-jerk root cause analysis led to simple, easy-to-understand, wrong-headed countermeasures: passengers shouldn’t be able to get up during the last hour of any flight, anywhere.
Punishing millions of passengers to protect against a few extremists is a bad countermeasure stemming from bad root cause analysis. Random screenings of elderly women who have had knee replacement surgery or young children, a sampling technique, also seems to be silly.
Root cause analysis should get to the root of the problem: Why was a known extremist allowed to board any flight, anywhere?
Continue Reading "Bad Root Cause Analysis and Countermeasures"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Six Sigma.
We just finished exhibiting at the IHI conference at the Orlando Marriott World Center. The Marriott has expanded it’s exhibit hall, but, unfortunately it’s 150 yards from the nearest classroom. The exhibit hall management company, Corcoran, has shown a remarkable lack of interest in the voice of the exhibitors or voice of the attendees.
Voice of the customer is a simple concept: What do customers want?
The attendees want to learn new stuff. Classes and workshops aren’t the only place they can learn new stuff. The exhibit hall can keep them up to date on the latest methods and technology.
For example, it’s still amazing to me how many people stop by our booth who had no idea that Excel could do control charts, pareto charts, fishbones, histograms, value stream maps or other Lean Six Sigma charts and tools.
Continue Reading "Voice of the Customer"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Six Sigma.
This weekend I exhibited at the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM). The risk managers were interested in our Lean Six Sigma books, training and QI Macros software, but every so often I’d offer a demo CD to someone and they’d say: “Oh, we don’t need that. we’re an Insurance company.”
Insurance companies like to pretend that they don’t take forever to do anything and make tons of mistakes while they’re at it. This is nonsense. Insurance companies desperately need Lean Six Sigma.
My wife and I recently changed from COBRA to self-pay with United Healthcare. Everything seemed to go smoothly.
Continue Reading "Six Sigma for Insurance Companies"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Service, Six Sigma.
Last week we exhibited the QI Macros Quality Management Software for Excel at the the PMI Global Congress in Orlando, FL. I was surprised to discover how many PMs were worried that Lean Six Sigma would some how replace them. While quality management is an important part of the project management body of knowledge, it’s not the only thing PMs do.
So here’s my simple observation about the differences between project management and Lean Six Sigma:
| Project Management |
Lean Six Sigma |
| Getting Things Done |
Keeping Things Going
Making Things Better |
| Achieving Objectives |
Solving Problems |
Project Management and Lean Six Sigma are related, but don’t overlap that much.
Continue Reading "Project Management vs Lean Six Sigma"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Service, Six Sigma.
