Agile Lean Six Sigma

Improvement Insights Blog

Posts tagged "Agile Lean Six Sigma"

Not Everyone Likes Quality Improvement

There are a number of fears that make people hesitant to share data and or let you make improvements. Here’s why.

“Not everybody is in love with this whole idea of improvement. There are people who, when you come to them and say, “I need your data about such-and-such,” they don’t want you looking at their data because they don’t want to look stupid. If they’re the manager of that organization and they’ve had all this data and they can’t find what I call the “invisible low-hanging fruit,” they think that they’re stupid or something. No, they just don’t know how to analyze the data.

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

How Six Sigma SPC Software Design Can Slash the Learning Curve

How you design software can slash the learning curve. Did you design it for college students studying statistics or a business man or woman who just wants to achieve a result with minimal time, effort and training?

“Hi, Jay Arthur with the QI Macros [software]. I wanted to talk to you today about Six Sigma SPC software.

“Now, there’s some big dogs out there, and if you look at them real closely, you’ll see they were designed by professors in the statistical department who wanted to create software to train students in statistics. It has every nook and cranny and option and tweak and everything that you can possibly do to teach people statistics, and fill up curriculums that’ll last an entire semester to focus on different things that you could do to tweak all these little statistics.

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

Cultures Want To Stay In Sync

To create a Quality Culture you will first need to be out of sync, then become the “cool kid” that everyone wants to sync with. Here’s how:

“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].

“Seth Godin had a blog recently that I think applies to us. Here’s what he said: He said, “Culture, by its very definition, isn’t the work of being right. It’s the work of being in sync.”

“When I was growing up, all the hippies gathered in Haight Ashbury; they weren’t wrong, they were just being in sync.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.

Agile Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Training for Results

21st Century Quality is changing how companies implement Lean Six Sigma. Here’s how:

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

“Over the last couple of years I’ve been going all of the Quality conferences, and I’ve seen some presentations that I think point us in a useful direction in terms of how to go about implementing Quality and getting results more quickly, and to accelerate, to develop some exponential growth in terms of how we achieve these results.

“About a year and a half ago I was at the Lean Six Sigma conference in Phoenix , and I saw Christus Health, and they talked about how they started out trying to do the traditional “Big Sigma Black Belt / Green Belt” whole thing, but they weren’t getting any results.

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

Exponential Quality 2.0

The keynote speaker at ASQ World Conference on Quality Improvement reiterated the exponential change challenge. It’s critical to quality professionals everywhere. Here’s what he said:

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

“I was at the ASQ World Conference in scenic Fort Worth, and oddly enough they had the same keynote speaker they had at the Lean Six Sigma conference in February in Phoenix. Now, I don’t know if ASQ is trying to save money by getting a bulk deal or if they’re trying to send out this message. This guy was talking about how business is changing exponentially, right – not glacially, exponentially.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.

Where are the Quality Tools at ASQ WCQI?

Having reviewed the quality tool usage in posters at ASQ WCQI, I have to ask: Where are the Quality Tools?

 

 

“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].

“I was at the ASQ World conference and I looked at the team posters – you know, the improvement posters that were located in the exhibit hall. Surprisingly, out of all of all these little posters that were out there were there only two control charts, there were about five fishbone [diagrams], maybe one Pareto chart, but most the rest of it was line and bar charts.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, QI Macros.

Agile – Fail Fast, Fail Forward

Agile Silicon Valley Companies have this motto: Fail Fast, Fail Forward. Here’s how it applies to Lean Six Sigma:

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

“I was out at the ASQ World Conference this year and I was observing this guy talking about exponential growth, and he was saying that in Silicon Valley they have a motto: “Fail Fast, Fail Forward.”

“Now I think everybody worries about failing in their first project or whatever it is. No, “fail fast, fail forward,” that’s the Agile approach to things: Rapid iteration to converge on a better world, right?

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights.

Which Came First, Management Support or Results?

What’s the easiest way to get management support for Lean Six Sigma?

“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software.]

“If you’ve been around Six Sigma or TQM and all these other things, you often hear it said (and you know it’s one of Deming’s 14 points) that you need management commitment and support… to get results – to get anything going.

“I’m going to disagree. I’m going to suggest to you that if you start getting results and start improving things and saving time, saving money, saving lives using the tools of quality, you will get management support.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.

Hacking Lean Six Sigma Training

In the early 1990s, I took a control chart class that lasted five days. We learned decision trees and how to calculate control chart formulas with a calculator. I knew that the phone company would never tolerate five-day trainings for 70,000 employees and I knew that few of our employees would tolerate calculating these formulas manually. The only way to remove this barrier was to automate it. Here’s how I did it.

Let’s stop teaching people things they don’t need to know. It’s waste. When I automated everything, it shortened the training and increased retention and results. You can too.

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur.

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

Will It Work Here?

Agile Lean Six Sigma approach will rapidly answer this question. One-day Yellow Belt problem solving will get results where Green Belt and Black Belt training may not.

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

“I was out at the Lean Six Sigma World Conference in San Antonio there was a very interesting presentation about Yellow Belt trainings. What they found was that if they did it a certain way (which is the way I’ve been doing it for the last twenty years) that they got better results. Well, that’s kind of cool, right?

Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.