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In Seoul, South Korea, I realized I was born during the Korean war. WWII affected my life. Having been to the sites of major attacks, there are lessons to be learned. Here are my thoughts.
“Well hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I’m here in Seoul, South Korea. We just finished up a cruise of Japan, which was very interesting. I realized my wife and I were both born in 1951, which was right in the middle of the Korean War. That was 70-plus years ago. I think because we were born 6 years after World War II, it was very impactful for me, anyway; I don’t know about my wife.
Continue Reading "Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80th Anniversary"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
You don’t always need to do a big Lean Six Sigma project. Maybe it’s enough to make things faster and easier, but in some cases, slower and harder. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“A friend of mine recommended this book called “The Friction Project,” and they talk about how in companies… Arthur’s Law [applies]: ‘The unexamined process gets even slower, [more] sluggish, more error-prone with time.’ They talk about the idea of becoming a friction fixer.
“Now, this isn’t like the deep nested stuff that we would think about in Lean Six Sigma, but it’s how we think about every day; every day when we’re working with someone.
Continue Reading "Become a Friction Fixer"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Arthur’s Law: The unexamined process becomes increasingly sluggish and error-prone.
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I want to introduce you to what I call ‘Arthur’s Law.’ That’s my law, which is ‘The unexamined process becomes increasingly sluggish and error-prone.’
“Things don’t just stay [static], they just get more sluggish and more error-prone. People add more workarounds, and the workarounds cause more defects and mistakes and errors and waste and rework and lost profit and patient harm and whatever it is.
Continue Reading "Arthur’s Law of Process Improvement"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Over 500 people signed up for this webinar, with Jay Arthur demonstrating how to teach Lean Six Sigma in one day and generate results, while also answering questions asked by attendees.
Jay Arthur is the author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” which is now in its 2nd edition.
You can learn more about Jay’s Agile Lean Six Sigma Trainer Training by clicking HERE.
If you’re interested in learning more about Jay’s ideas on Agile Lean Six Sigma, you can download a free brief summary of Jay’s ideas in his “Agile Lean Six Sigma Manifesto,” available at THIS link.
Continue Reading "7/17/25 Agile Lean Six Sigma Webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog.
Over 400 people signed up for this webinar, with Jay Arthur demonstrating how to implement Healthcare Data Analytics to save time, save money, and (most importantly) save lives.
Books that Jay may have mentioned in the video:
You can view a short two-page illustrated guide to the Zero Harm – Trillion Dollar Prescription by clicking HERE.
Continue Reading "7/15/25 Healthcare Data Analytics Webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Data Mining, Excel, Healthcare, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma, Webinar.
After a hundred years, people still aren’t using control charts. Here’s why:
Download my free eBook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Well hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“Control charts just turned a hundred years old, but if you look at the adoption rate for control charts it’s been pretty flat. You see it mainly in manufacturing, you don’t see it much in healthcare.
“We attend two big healthcare quality conferences: At the Magnet conference, out of hundreds of posters, 89% use line and bar charts (which I consider to be last-century technology).
Continue Reading "Why Aren’t People Using Control Charts? A Root Cause Analysis"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Over 50 people signed up for this webinar, with Jay Arthur demonstrating some of the software’s most frequently used tools and answering questions asked by attendees.
If you saw a feature demonstrated in the webinar that might have been added to QI Macros after the version you’re using (for instance, the Improvement Project Wizard or the automated Process Change Wizard), you may need to purchase an upgrade to bring your QI Macros to the current version.
Send an email to support@qimacros.com and we can help, for instance in generating a quote to upgrade all the users at your organization or just guiding you through the purchasing process.
Continue Reading "7/10/25 QI Macros webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog.
What do you need to win 80% of the time? Here’s a surprising answer from analysis of top tennis pros.
“Well hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I get the… American Statistical Association’s magazine, and they had kind of an interesting article about tennis, of all things. It turns out that people like Federer and Nadal and Djokovic and everybody else win 80% of their matches, but they only win slightly more than half of the points they played. So Federer and Nadal and Djokovic, their win percentage were 54% of the points; Andy Murray: 53%; Pete Sampras: 54% and Andre Agassi: 53%.
Continue Reading "Business Lessons from Tennis Pros"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Sometimes you have to forget something to learn something new. Sometimes you have to try to solve a problem to be able to learn how to correctly solve problems.
Download my free eBook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I read kind of an interesting book recently, it’s called “Make It Stick,” which is the science of successful learning. In there, the author argues that remembering and learning and forgetting are key pieces of all that, and sometimes you have to forget things to be able to learn something new.
Continue Reading "Importance of Forgetting in Learning"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Over 50 people signed up for this webinar, with Jay Arthur demonstrating how to implement Healthcare Data Analytics to save time, save money, and (most importantly) save lives.
Books that Jay may have mentioned in the video:
You can view a short two-page illustrated guide to the Zero Harm – Trillion Dollar Prescription by clicking HERE.
Continue Reading "6/26/25 Healthcare Data Analytics Webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Data Mining, Excel, Healthcare, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma, Webinar.
