Manufacturing – Lean Six Sigma Moneybelt

Why Are People Using Line and Bar Charts, not Control Charts?

If you look at improvement project posters at quality conferences around the country, you’ll find that almost everyone is using Excel line and bar charts. Even after decades of Six Sigma training and association membership. What’s the hold up? Here’s my take:

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

“Every year I look at lots of improvement posters and I keep wondering, “Why isn’t anyone using the tools of Quality?” Control charts, Pareto charts, histograms… Most of them are just using plain old Excel line and bar charts. Now it might be because they don’t know about the power and beauty and how easy it can be now to do Control charts, Pareto charts and fishbones.

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

Lean Response to COVID-19

We know that Lean can collapse cycle time by 75% or more. Here’s what that means for COVID-19:

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

“If you’ve ever done any Lean projects, you know pretty much if the process is this long {gestures}, with Value Stream Mapping and Spaghetti Diagramming, you can collapse that by maybe 75%, 80%, 90%. You can actually reduce the cycle time for almost anything and do it easily.

“One of the things that is creating optimism for me is that a few years ago I worked with an aerospace manufacturing company, and typically to get a Request For Proposal through, it was 1.9 years for any new part.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Healthcare, Improvement Insights, Lean.

Work ON your business, not IN it.

COVID-19 has slowed business for much of the nation. Here’s how you can make use of the time:

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

“I don’t know about you, but with this COVID virus thing going around, business has slowed a little bit, but that’s great! That gives us an opportunity to start to focus and work ON our business, not IN our business. Now is the time to start to find ways to simplify, streamline, optimize everything that you do so that when things come back on you’ll be ready for it and you’ll be faster, better, cheaper than you ever were before.

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

Shift from Manufacturing to Supply Chain

The July-August, 2018 Inc. magazine has an article (pg. 22) about manufacturing vs supply chain service jobs. From 1999-2015:

Manufacturing jobs declined from 12.5 million to 8.2. Supply chain jobs increased from 13.4 million to 20.0.
Manufacturing salaries climbed only slightly from $54,800 to 59,800 while supply chain jobs rose from $72,600 to $85,200.

With increasing manufacturing automation, more jobs are being created around supporting production than actual production. Something to think about.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog, Lean, Manufacturing.