Improvement Insights Blog

There are a number of people who make a New Year’s Resolution to eat healthier. Your favorite Fabulous Freelance Quality Improvement Specialist – yours truly – does not happen to be one of those people. As I stood at my favorite hot dog cart downtown on an unseasonably warm January day, Joe the Hot Dog Guy and I talked about those people.

“Yeah, I see it all the time,” Joe said, spooning bright green relish on my Chicago Dog. “They’ll even come by at the end of December and tell me that they ain’t gonna see me no more, on account of how they’re eating healthier in the new year. By the start of baseball season, they’re back.” He handed over the finished dog.

“Thanks,” I said. “Is it hard knowing you’re making people sad when they break their resolutions?”

“Whaddaya talkin’ about, sad?” Joe exclaimed in his Chicago accent, waving his arms wildly. “You ever seen somebody who’s been eatin’ salad and boiled chicken take their first bite of a chili dog in two-t’ree-four months? They sure as heck ain’t sad!”

“Mmm hmmm…” I said, which was the best I could manage with a mouthful of the best Chicago Dog in town.

“Y’know, I was hopin’ you were gonna stop by. I wanted to see if you could help me out a little bit here,” Joe said, gesturing to the hot dog cart.

“You mean like help selling hot dogs?” I asked.

“And watch all my profits go here?” he replied, poking me in the belly. “No, I was hoping you could help me get a handle on tracking my business a little better. I heard you do that for people.”

“Well, sure,” I responded. “The first thing, I suppose, is to start tracking some data. Then, once we have that, we can take a look at it and see if there’s any trends…”

“Way ahead of ya, bub,” Joe said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a USB drive. “Here’s a year’s worth of numbers: Number of hot dogs sold each day, stuff like that.”

“Well, okay.” I replied, a little surprised. I sat down on a nearby bench and opened up my laptop.

“My biggest challenge with a cart like this is knowing how much to order and how much to bring out with me, particularly the buns. They take up a lot of room, and they go stale quickly. If I don’t order or bring enough, I run out before I serve all the customers. If I order or bring too many, they only last so long before I gotta pitch ’em, and that’s waste.”

I opened up just one of the many files, and said, “You know, Joe, I’ve got to say that I’m impressed. I didn’t know you kept such detailed records.”

“Hey, even a kid from the west side of Chicago learns a thing or two or t’ree…” he said, going back to his cart to help a customer.

Meanwhile, I highlighted columns B and C and let QI Macros’ Control Chart Wizard choose the correct chart for me. It gave me an XmR chart of all the data, and I stretched the charts out to make them easier to see.

Joe walked back over while I was doing this. “You may be surprised to learn that I actually did that as well. I heard you talking about QI Macros this one time, so I’ve got a free trial version on my computer. I can’t make heads or tails of this, and I don’t know how somebody like you can, either.”

“Well, that’s the thing, Joe,” I replied. “This chart doesn’t tell me much of anything except that your sales vary pretty widely. What I’m really seeing is that we’re not looking at the data correctly. Tell me something: I always see you down here when I’m downtown on Thursdays. Are you always here at this location?”

“Here? No. Only Thursdays. I’ve got a pretty set rotation of places I go to – a different one each day. On the weekends I set up by the home improvement stores over by there.”

“So what I’m hearing is you don’t necessarily have one process here, you’ve actually got seven separate processes: one for each day of the week. Let’s rearrange the data to look at each day of the week separately.”

I highlighted columns A and C, then from the QI Macros submenu, I chose Restacking, then Unstack by Label.

After churning the data for a second, the software showed us this:

“What QI Macros has done is restacked the data and put each of the days in a separate column. Now we can look at each day separately.”

“Hey, that’s really somethin’!” exclaimed Joe. “Now what?”

“Well, we could run a chart on each of these individually, but I’d rather just create a dashboard where we can see all the charts at the same time.”

From the Control Chart Templates submenu, I selected the XmR Dashboard, then pasted in the data in the columns that the Restacking function had given us. I added labels of the week number in column A.

I switched to the “XmR Average R” tab at the bottom and clicked “Create XmR Dashboard.”

The software generated charts for each column. I rearranged them and put them in order, with Monday first. “See? Now if you look at each day separately, you can have a better idea of how many dogs you’ve sold on that day of the week, and you can bring the appropriate number of dogs and buns.”

Joe grinned. “See? I knew that if I asked an expert I’d get the right answer. How’s about your lunch is on me for the next two-t’ree months? That is, as long as you don’t try puttin’ ketchup on your hot dog like that Boston bartender friend of yours. I had to tell him, ‘If you’re older than 5, I ain’t puttin’ ketchup on your hot dog. Ketchup’s over there, you can ruin it yourself.'”

If you’re interested in learning more about the Restack function and the XmR chart, click HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE to read about it on the QI Macros website.

(It is with the utmost respect and reverence that we offer the character of Joe the Hot Dog Guy, in honor of the purveyor of the finest Chicago Dogs and Italian Beef sandwiches the Mile High City has ever experienced. The real Joe was so much more than just a “hot dog guy,” and more than we could show here, but his legacy remains. Arrivederci, Joe; you brought a little piece of the Windy City here to Denver. We know wherever you are, the Italian Beef is delicious, the Chicago Dogs remain ketchup-free and all the Chicago sports teams have winning records… even the Bears.)