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One of the biggest impediments to quality improvement could be the “Hollow Easter Bunnies” in your organization. Here’s how to spot them and what to do about it.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“When you were a kid, did you get an Easter bunny and you were all excited because it was “chocolate chocolate chocolate”? Then you bite into it and you discover it’s hollow, right? It’s an external skin of chocolate but it’s not a chocolate Easter bunny, it’s a hollow Easter bunny.
“I was reading this book called “The Friction Project” and they were talking about how it was difficult to reduce friction in organizations.
Continue Reading "Watch Out for Hollow Easter Bunnies"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Everyone talks about low-hanging fruit, but only a few find it. Here’s why:
“Well hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I find that a lot of people are afraid to use Excel pivot tables to summarize data. Every company has raw data about mistakes and errors and defects and whatever it is, but it’s all individual events. People are afraid to learn how to use pivot tables to summarize that.
“I’m telling you what, that’s where the ‘invisible low-hanging fruit’ lives. Everybody talks about ‘low hanging fruit,’ but this is where the ‘invisible low hanging fruit’ lives.
Continue Reading "Use Excel PivotTables to Find the Invisible Low-hanging Fruit"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Companies always nag you to buy the extended warranty for everything from teapots to computers. Is it worth it? Not if you know the Weibull (bathtub) curve.
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Well hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I don’t know about you, but if you bought anything electronic, they always try and sell you a maintenance agreement on it, even if it’s a $27 electric teapot. Right? It’s like, WHAT?
“If you know anything about the Weibull curve, it’s called a bathtub curve.
Continue Reading "Weibull (Bathtub) Curve and Extended Warranty"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Over 50 people signed up for this webinar, with Jay Arthur demonstrating some of the software’s most frequently used tools and answering questions asked by attendees.
If you saw a feature demonstrated in the webinar that might have been added to QI Macros after the version you’re using (for instance, the Improvement Project Wizard or the automated Process Change Wizard), you may need to purchase an upgrade to bring your QI Macros to the current version.
Send an email to support@qimacros.com and we can help, for instance in generating a quote to upgrade all the users at your organization or just guiding you through the purchasing process.
Continue Reading "*Latest webinar: 3/11/25 QI Macros webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Data Mining, Excel, QI Macros, Webinar.
Too many people are using unsupported, home-grown tools to improve quality. Or using none at all. That’s a problem. Here’s why:
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Well hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“In the old days, pharmacists used to grind up and mix chemicals by hand to make prescriptions, right? And graphic artists used to hand draw everything, right? And opticians used to grind lenses by hand to make glasses. So all those people… all those jobs are still needed, but they don’t do them the way they did 30, 40, 50, 60, 80, 100 years ago, right?
Continue Reading "Are You Using the Available Tools of Quality 2025?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Over 80 people signed up for this webinar, with Jay Arthur demonstrating how to implement Healthcare Data Analytics to save time, save money, and (most importantly) save lives.
Books that Jay may have mentioned in the video:
You can view a short two-page illustrated guide to the Zero Harm – Trillion Dollar Prescription by clicking HERE.
Continue Reading "2/20/25 Healthcare Data Analytics Webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Data Mining, Excel, Healthcare, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma, Webinar.
I’m lazy and that’s a good thing. It might be good for you too. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I want to tell you: I’m lazy. I don’t want to spend any more time doing anything that I have to, right? When we started up, [the standard was] week-long trainings for teams. I eventually boiled that big binder down into about a 16-page handout (which I now use) and train people in in a day or less and get results. I wanted to collapse the curve between learning and implementation of results so that people got that hit of “This is what we can do quickly.”
Continue Reading "I’m Lazy and That’s a Good Thing"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Struggling to get a good Cp and Cpk? It might be your data. Here’s why:
“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“We had a guy call in the other day and he was trying to determine the capability of his process. Unfortunately, he’d taken [measurements of] everything from his startup to his shutdown scrap and ran that as a capability study, and he wasn’t capable. I said, “Well, there you go…” But if you run a control chart of that, you can see the wiggly startup and the wiggly shutdown and then there’s this nice stable process in the middle.
Continue Reading "Capability Analysis Issues"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Are you still using last century tools in the 21st Century?
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“When I was a kid growing up in in the 60s, my mom had this old wringer washing machine. Back in the day, there was a washing machine where you washed all your clothes and there was a wringer on top. You would take the clothes out and you’d feed it in the wringer, which would squish all the water out of it. There weren’t any electric dryers… I’m sorry. She would wring her washing and then she would go out and hang it on a clothes line where it would dry in the Tucson sun, and then she’d bring them in fold them and whatever.
Continue Reading "Mom’s Wringer Washing Machine"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Over 40 people signed up for this webinar, with Jay Arthur demonstrating how to implement Healthcare Data Analytics to save time, save money, and (most importantly) save lives.
Here are the books Jay mentions in the video:
You can view a short two-page illustrated guide to the Zero Harm – Trillion Dollar Prescription by clicking HERE.
Continue Reading "1/14/25 Healthcare Data Analytics Webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Data Mining, Excel, Healthcare, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma, Webinar.
