Improvement Insights Blog

John, a senior executive with a large lumber company, went to Japan with 30 other leaders for 30 days. Everywhere they went, in every corner of the company, they found one quality tool over and over again.

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].

“I started telling you a little bit about my new friend John who worked for the big lumber company and went on that trip to Japan. He said, “Everywhere I went, Pareto charts, Pareto charts, Pareto charts, Pareto charts, Pareto charts, Pareto charts, Pareto charts.” Every company he went to: Pareto charts. It was everywhere. It was in the admin, it was down on the factory floor… everywhere you went, there were Pareto charts. Everybody was improving everything.

“He discovered that when they came back that one of the opportunities was it was taking them like nine days to close the books for the company. Well, that’s a long time, all right? And so they worked on that and they collapsed that to three days so we can get actual results and things earlier in any given month.

“You can use this stuff anywhere… anywhere. That’s what he discovered in Japan: they were all using it everywhere, right?

“There was one story I heard of: the ladies in the Tea Room at Toyota had found a way to reduce the consumption of tea because some tables like lots of tea some people at tables didn’t, and they all sat at the same table every day when they had a break. They actually found a way to cut tea consumption by 50 percent. So if you can do it in the Tea Room, why can’t you do it in your own area?

“Let’s create a hassle-free America, hassle-free healthcare. Let’s go out and improve something this week… you might even try using some Pareto charts.”