Improvement Insights Blog
Our Quality Gurus Are Gone
The quality gurus of the last century are gone. Who will take their place?
“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“One of our longtime sponsors and supporters Jim Harrington passed away recently at the age of 95. I saw him every year at the American Society for Quality conference. He will be missed, but all of our gurus are gone: Deming, Juran, Ishikawa, Crosby… everybody is gone. We’re going to need some new gurus, including you. We’re going to need new people to champion Quality in this century.
“Maybe it’s time to rethink and let go of some of the things we did in the last century (which were all about manufacturing) when most of America works in service industries. Over 80% now. Less than 10% work in manufacturing; over 80% work in service industries. Maybe we need to change our approach so that we’re better for serving healthcare, banking, all of those kinds of things… not just automotive and aerospace and whatever.
“So, I don’t think of myself as a guru. I’m just a geek who likes to create tools to help people be wildly more successful. I am trying to say that there is a better approach and there are companies out there using it: Christus Health… (rats… my brain’s blank…) Crayola… Underwriters Laboratories. There are people out there that are approaching this in a different way. They’re learning how to hack Lean and Six Sigma to get results.
“It’s entirely possible to do that in a day or two; not in weeks or months or years, all right? It’s too long. Nobody’s going to… your leadership team is not going to wait years and months or days to do this. They’re just not.
“So is there a better approach? Is there a way forward where we as a Quality community can really start to really simplify, streamline, optimize everything that goes on and get rid of all the turbulence, all the mistakes and errors and everything else that I see going on every day in everyday life?
“So that’s my Improvement Insight. Who’s going to be the guru of the future? Pysdek retired, right? I hardly ever see Forrest Breyfogle any more, right? Our gurus are gone or retired or whatever.
“Let’s go out and improve something this week.”
