Addition sickness – Lean Six Sigma Moneybelt

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Have You Got Addition Sickness?

When processes aren’t working, people try adding to the process rather than subtracting. Doesn’t work. Here’s why:



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

“I saw a phrase the other day that I liked, and I think you might get it. They called it “Addition Sickness”; Addition Sickness. What does that mean? Well, you end up adding more policies, procedures, rules, whatevers, workarounds, inspections… whatever it is. You know, Deming hated adding inspection; [he thought] that was stupid, right?

“But we tend to add things to a process to try and counteract whatever is going wrong.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.