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If you’re doing Quality Improvement, you should always be in a learning mode. If you create a safe space for people to learn (and to fail), you’re creating conditions where Quality Improvement can grow and thrive.
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].
“One of the barriers I find to getting people involved in Quality Improvement is they have this fear that somebody will ridicule whatever they’ve decided to try to do and make fun of their knowledge of statistics or whatever it is.
Continue Reading "Psychological Safety in Quality Improvement"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
The U.S. phone system was engineered to handle one day’s maximum traffic: Mother’s Day. What’s yours?
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].
“In 1973, I graduated from college and went to work for the phone company in Denver, Colorado Mountain Bell at the time, as a programmer. We did lots of different types of projects, and at one point I ended up working on a thing called the Trunk Forecasting System.
“Now, trunk lines are how you connect each major city with other cities and so on.
Continue Reading "Are You Ready for Your Mother’s Day?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
After WWII, Deming had to turn to Japan to spread the gospel of quality. I often feel empathy and sympathy for his struggles to bring quality improvement to the world.
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].
“I have sympathy for W. Edwards Deming. He learned Quality Improvement at Western Electric with Shewhart back in the ‘20s and ‘30s. And then all of those tools were used in World War II. But after World War II, he was sort of a pariah.
Continue Reading "Sympathy for Deming"
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 "4/22/25 QI Macros webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog.
The steps of 5S include things that we can do in our everyday lives with our workplaces, our house, our neighborhood. When you do that, I think it makes the world a better place for everyone.
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].
“Many, many years ago, a friend of mine and I went to Hong Kong because I’d read the book “Tai-Pan,” and I really wanted to see Hong Kong back before it became part of China.
Continue Reading "5S Your Environment and Not Just Your Work Area"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
One of the biggest impediments to quality improvement could be the “Hollow Easter Bunnies” in your organization. Here’s how to spot them and what to do about it.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“When you were a kid, did you get an Easter bunny and you were all excited because it was “chocolate chocolate chocolate”? Then you bite into it and you discover it’s hollow, right? It’s an external skin of chocolate but it’s not a chocolate Easter bunny, it’s a hollow Easter bunny.
“I was reading this book called “The Friction Project” and they were talking about how it was difficult to reduce friction in organizations.
Continue Reading "Watch Out for Hollow Easter Bunnies"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Over 80 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 "4/8/25 Healthcare Data Analytics Webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Data Mining, Excel, Healthcare, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma, Webinar.
I’ve got a new term for you: Clownplexity. Here’s what I mean:
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].
“I heard an interesting word just recently: Clownplexity. That’s when something’s so complicated, it’s funny. And I thought, “You know, there’s many times where I sense that roaming around in the halls of Quality Improvement.” So, if something seems so complex it’s funny, that’s clownplexity.
“That’s my Improvement Insight: A new word to use. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”
Continue Reading "Clownplexity"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Computer programming used to be done on hardware boards with wires. Now it’s much easier. Six Sigma used to be hard. Now it’s easy too. Here’s why:
“Well hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“When I was a kid, my dad was the manager of a company and they had to program their own computers. He had a hard board and you plugged wires in it to get it to do things like add, subtract, multiply, divide, calculate taxes on sales of stuff. It was old IBM 401 or so… I don’t know what it was, but you would then slide that into the computer, snap it in and then run your reports.
Continue Reading "Programming Used to Be Hard Wired"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Everyone talks about low-hanging fruit, but only a few find it. Here’s why:
“Well hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I find that a lot of people are afraid to use Excel pivot tables to summarize data. Every company has raw data about mistakes and errors and defects and whatever it is, but it’s all individual events. People are afraid to learn how to use pivot tables to summarize that.
“I’m telling you what, that’s where the ‘invisible low-hanging fruit’ lives. Everybody talks about ‘low hanging fruit,’ but this is where the ‘invisible low hanging fruit’ lives.
Continue Reading "Use Excel PivotTables to Find the Invisible Low-hanging Fruit"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
