Improvement Insights Blog

Signal versus Noise

“Our evolutionary instincts sometimes lead us to see patterns when there are none there. People have been doing this all the time – finding patterns in random noise.” – Tomaso Poggio

People just need a way to separate the Signal from the Noise.

Here are some insights from the book by Nate Silver.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Data Mining, Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog, Six Sigma.

Lean Six Sigma Fundamentalists vs Revolutionaries

Lean Six Sigma Fundamentalists believe:
– Get management commitment
– Train lots of black and green belts
– Implement wall-to-wall floor to ceiling

Lean Six Sigma Revolutionaries believe:
-Engage informal leaders
-Train money belts
-Laser-focused, data-driven breakthrough improvements

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Posted by Jay Arthur in QI Macros, Six Sigma.

The Great Training Robbery

October 2016 HBR article, Why Leadership Training Fails-and What to Do About It, calls the $160 Billion spent on training in the U.S. the Great Training Robbery. The authors say: “Learning doesn’t lead to better organizational performance, because people soon revert to their old ways of doing things.”

Unfortunately, this is true of most Six Sigma training courses. If you don’t apply what you’ve learned immediately to reducing delay, defects and deviation, the learning is lost in 72 hours.

That’s why my Lean Six Sigma workshops focus on solving real problems using existing data. Once people connect the methods and tools to results, it’s hard to go backward.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, Lean, Manufacturing, Service, Six Sigma.

Cost of Poor Quality

Every businesses wastes a quarter to a third of total expenses 1) fixing stuff that shouldn’t be broken (rework) and 2) throwing away stuff that can’t be fixed (scrap). There are four main costs of poor quality:

1. Internal failures that cause rework and scrap.
2. External failures that increase returns (to be reworked or scrapped), billing adjustments, concessions and customer complaints.
3. Inspection costs of incoming materials,inspection of work in process and final inspection and testing.
4. Prevention costs (i.e, Lean Six Sigma)

Inspection, failure, rework and scrap can easily devour much of a companies time and money. Preventing these problems is far less expensive, but requires focus and dedication to eliminate mistakes and errors.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Six Sigma.