Is QI Macros® Competing with Minitab®?
Maybe on one level or another, but we’re both competing with the 1,000 pound gorilla in the room. You probably know who it is, but here’s my take on it.
Join the Agile Quality Improvement Movement
Maybe on one level or another, but we’re both competing with the 1,000 pound gorilla in the room. You probably know who it is, but here’s my take on it.
Join the Agile Quality Improvement Movement
Are we in the quality community letting our past dictate our future? Is our bias stopping us from seeing the possibilities?
Join the Agile Quality Improvement Movement
Continue Reading "Confirmation Bias In Lean Six Sigma Implementation"
At ASQ World, Craig Plain gave a fun presentation on Cartoons for Quality.
One of the exercises used a standard work procedure for drawing a pig. Try it yourself
Standard Work Procedure Pig Cartoon Instructions
Here’s mine:

While I’m not normally fond of using games for training, I thought it was interesting how none of us drew exactly the same pig.
ASQ World 2018, there were a lot of sessions about “Industry 4.0” and the transformation required by quality improvement professionals (Quality 4.0).
Wikipedia describes Industry 4.0 as: “the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies.”
If I can read the writing on the wall, this means that more manufacturing jobs will be automated out of existence, including quality improvement. In the next few years, AI will embody the quality improvement disciplines, and automate detection and autocorrection of performance problems. No human required.
But manufacturing is only 11% of U.S. employment. 80% is service industries. While quality in manufacturing is still important, the rise of service quality improvement is desperately needed in everything from healthcare to fast food.
Here’s a Pareto chart of case studies by country at ASQ World 2018. Notice any trends?

I’m here at ASQ World in Seattle, 2018. As usual, I went through the team presentations to look for quality tool usage. The results are dismal. Mainly line and pie charts.

To paraphrase Steve Jobs, watching people do Six Sigma projects with plain line, bar and pie charts is like watching a man kick a whale across the beach with his bare feet.
Get QI Macros and start using the tools of Quality. Join my Quality Improvement Movement.
To commemorate Nurses Week 2018, Jay speaks with LeAnn Thieman, author of “Chicken Soup for the Nurses Soul” and the founder of SelfCare for HealthCare.
In Win Bigly, Scott Adams describes confirmation bias as the human tendency to irrationally believe new information that supports your existing world view even when it doesn’t. Leaders, managers and team members all think they know the solution to a given problem, even when they don’t. Here’s how confirmation bias can screw up your improvement project.
Join the Agile Lean Six Sigma Movement.
I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. Customers call us wanting to know all of the background about the hows, whys and formulas of a chart. I think they are afraid someone will challenge or ridicule their analysis. Here’s what I think.
The editor of Harvard Business Review says that “corporate survival today requires the capacity for rapid change.” Isn’t it time to embrace an Agile approach to Lean Six Sigma to “speed its evolution and better serve customers’ needs?”
Join the Agile Quality Improvement Movement!