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Latest "Six Sigma" Posts
After weeks of Six Sigma Green or Black Belt training, many people are still confused about what to do and where to start. These people tell me: “Jay, I read your Lean Six Sigma Demystified or Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals book and it clarified Six Sigma. I felt like I finally knew what to do.”
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of Lean Six Sigma Demystified and Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals
“Over the last decade, I’ve been at conferences and talking to people on the phone, and they say, “Jay, I got my Green Belt training and my Black Belt training (or whatever it was), and I was still confused until I read your Demystified book.”
Continue Reading "Books to Simplify and Clarify Lean Six Sigma"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
Programmers often think they need to rewrite software systems to fix the problems in an existing system. This is the wrong approach. You can tune up an existing system with a lot less effort using the 4-50 Rule.
“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified,” “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software]. I spent most of my life working in IT, from mainframe systems to minicomputer systems to microcomputer systems, which led me into the QI Macros. I’ve worked with software my entire life, and there’s something I’d like you to get an idea about.
Continue Reading "Applying the 4-50 Rule to Software"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Six Sigma.
Consultants and trainers keep trying to save money on Six Sigma software while charging a small fortune for training. Without tools to to the job, all of this training is wasted and improvement projects will fail to sustain results. Are you trying to save a few dollars on software or maximize the results from Six Sigma?
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I’ve been eternally frustrated over the last 20-something years because Six Sigma trainers and [others] will go out and train companies, spend weeks training people in a company, but then not give them the software to do the job.
Continue Reading "Trying to Save Money on Software Can Kill Your Six Sigma Results"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
Six Sigma beginners get hung up on the question: “Do I have good data?” You never will. Here’s why and what to do about it.
“People are always asking me, “Jay, how do I know if I have good data?” I’m going to tell you what: you don’t. All data is either collected poorly or whatever, and if nobody’s been using it, they collect it even more poorly.
“Most data is systematically distorted to make somebody look good. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to recognize that it’s not going to be the world’s best data, and waiting for the world’s best data will not solve those problems that are waiting for you.
Continue Reading "How Do I Know If I Have Good Data?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Six Sigma.
People trained in Six Sigma want to take an advanced tool and apply it to a problem. They spend a lot of time looking for a problem where they can use the tool. That’s the wrong approach. What should you do instead?
“I’ve been detecting sort of an interesting pattern, at least recently. There’s all these people being trained as Green Belts and Black Belts, and when they’re done with all that training they have all these tools and then they decide they’re going to take one of those tools – maybe it’s Attribute Agreement Analysis or Design Of Experiments or something more complicated – and then they go out and they look for a problem to solve using that tool.
Continue Reading "Tools Looking for Problems to Solve"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
Do you ever order toast, but it comes burnt? Do you eat it or send it back? How often does this happen to you? Yesterday it happened to me three times in one day. What can we learn from these quality failures?
“We’re babysitting our daughter’s dog; she’s only 10 months old and she needs some exercise, so we took her to the Hobnob daycare center. When we got there, the woman up front, kind of with a gruff tone, said “Well, you need to make a reservation.” My wife Shirley said “Well, our daughter made a reservation.” “Well, I don’t see it here,” you know?
Continue Reading "Burnt Toast Society – Are You a Member?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
Getting quality improvement teams to come together and be productive is key to success. Here’s a story and insight into get results quickly.
“Hi I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“When I was a young’un, I was in programming and there was a guy named Tom DeMarco who’s very famous, actually, in… the whole software development environment. And so, one of the things that he told us was a story about how he was bringing a new software team [together] and getting them started.
“So what he did was he invited them all over to his house to make a spaghetti dinner but when they got there he admitted that he didn’t have anything to make a spaghetti dinner.
Continue Reading "Spaghetti Dinner Team Building"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Data Mining, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
How do you make improvement countermeasures stick? The answer might surprise you.
“Hi I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“You know, one of the things about countermeasures is when somebody else invents the countermeasure and makes you do it, guess what? You don’t like it very much. So when we were all told to wear masks, wash our hands, stay out of crowds… guess what? Some people really hated that. Now me as a Quality guy, I said “Oh, they know what the countermeasures are. I should wear my mask, wash my hands, stay out of crowds,” but not everyone does that.
Continue Reading "How Do You Make Countermeasures Stick?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Six Sigma.
Ever noticed how long it takes people to learn to speak the jargon of Lean Six Sigma and Quality Improvement? Maybe it’s time for a change.
“Hi I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“Over my 30+ years in Quality Improvement I’ve learned all kinds of Japanese words like “kaizen” and “gemba” and “Ishikawa.” Nothing’s worse than “statistical process control” because nobody likes statistics, everybody thinks processes are boring and control is something that nobody in the United States of America likes, right? They just don’t.
“So, I think we become jargon-rich and clarity-poor.
Continue Reading "Jargon vs Clarity"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
Ever noticed how long it takes for people to analyze a spreadsheet? Too long. How can a smart chart eliminate the delay and accelerate understanding?
“One of the things I’ve learned is spreadsheets… People do a lot of spreadsheets. 54% of the Excel spreadsheets out there have no formulas in them, or anything else for that matter; they’re just little reporty things.
“Now, one of the things for you to think about with a spreadsheet is, it’s an auditory process. You’re reading it cell by cell, by heading by heading, by whatever by whatever, and reading (an auditory thing) is a very slow process.
Continue Reading "Spreadsheets are Slow – Smart Charts Are Fast"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Excel, Improvement Insights, Six Sigma.
