4-50 Rule – Lean Six Sigma Moneybelt

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Posts tagged "4-50 Rule"

The 4-50 for Emission Testing

Denver requires emission testing for cars over a certain age. But it may not be necessary. Here’s why:

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

“I live in Denver, Colorado. You know, we used to get in the winter… we’d call it ‘the brown cloud,’ right? So they decided that we had to test every car every few years just to try and do emission testing and figure out which ones were polluting. But there was a guy here that invented a little tool that could detect cars that are polluting as they drive by.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.

Applying the 4-50 Rule to Software

Programmers often think they need to rewrite software systems to fix the problems in an existing system. This is the wrong approach. You can tune up an existing system with a lot less effort using the 4-50 Rule.



“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified,” “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software]. I spent most of my life working in IT, from mainframe systems to minicomputer systems to microcomputer systems, which led me into the QI Macros. I’ve worked with software my entire life, and there’s something I’d like you to get an idea about.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Six Sigma.

Drill Down to the 4-50 Rule to Get Results

You don’t have to fix everything, just the one thing out of 25 that causes over half the waste, rework and lost profit.



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

“I’ve talked to you about Pareto’s rule before, but I continue to come back to this time and time again: 20% of what you’re doing is producing 80% of the waste, rework, lost profit, [lost] productivity, patient harm… whatever it is. But within that 20% that Pareto rule still applies, which means that only 4% of what you’re doing is producing over half the mistakes and errors.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Data Mining, Improvement Insights, QI Macros.

Arthur’s 4-50 Rule – The Secret to Breakthrough Improvement

We’re all familiar with Pareto’s rule: 20% of causes produce 80% of the results. But are you familiar with Arthur’s 4-50 rule? Typically, 4% of any process – one step out of 35 – is the cause of more than 50% of waste, rework and lost profit.



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

“Now I’ve probably talked to you about this before, but we’re all familiar with Pareto’s rule that 20% of what you do produces 80% of the mistakes, errors, waste, rework, lost profit. 20% of your customers produce 80% of your revenue.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma, Statistics.