Improvement Insights Blog
Economic Boom Times and Six Sigma
When times are tough, companies turn to Six Sigma, but when the economy is booming, they forget. That’s a mistake.
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“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I don’t know if you noticed this, but during economic boom times, people get so busy trying to make stuff, ship stuff, sell stuff, make money that they forget about Quality Improvement, and they turn their attention to production, not to optimizing their production. And that works until there’s an economic downturn. And by that point, then all of a sudden they go, “Oh my gosh, we have to figure out how to cut costs and blah blah blah blah blah.” Right?
“So then they try and spin up their Quality Improvement efforts which have been languishing for a while, you know? And it’s a little late… you’re coming a little late to the party.
“Maybe you should be doing all this Quality Improvement stuff while you have time and money to actually focus and work on those things. Even though you’re producing a lot, “Gee, I better produce better stuff so I don’t have as much rework and waste and whatever.” Does this make sense?
“So during economic uptimes, stay on top of your Quality efforts, and in down times you’ll reap the benefits of that and you’ll be able to slay your competition because they’re going to be struggling.
“That’s my Improvement Insight. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”
