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Posts tagged "QI Macros"
Ever wonder why quality doesn’t get any better? Might the law of least effort.
“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“You know, as I look around, there’s this thing called “The Law of Least Effort,” which means humans (animals… whatever) will do the easiest thing possible. That’s why in Boston, the cows all walked certain paths and when it came time to… put in [roads for] cars and stuff, they paved the cow path because the cows knew where the [most level] ground was. Of course, that makes Boston almost impassible if you’ve ever been there.
Continue Reading "The Law of Least Effort"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Register for the upcoming FREE QI Macros Live Webinar, happening Tuesday, August 6th, 2024 at 9:00 a.m. MDT.
Learn more about it in the video below, and register at THIS link.
What: FREE QI Macros – Lean Six Sigma SPC Software for Excel Webinar.
When: Tuesday, August 6th, 2024 at 9:00 a.m. MDT.
Where: Join online from wherever you are.
How: Register for the webinar HERE.
Continue Reading "*Next Free QI Macros Live Webinar: Tuesday, August 6th, 2024"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Data Mining, Excel, QI Macros, Webinar.
Over 30 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: 7/16/24 QI Macros webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Data Mining, Excel, QI Macros, Webinar.
Detective shows usually have two detectives: one who leaps to arrest an obvious suspect and one who continues investigate the evidence. Which one are you?
“If you’ve ever watched detective shows, there’s always one detective that wants to leap to a solution and arrest the wrong person and just get him off the off the books, right? Then the other detective [says], “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa… wait… wait a minute. We haven’t looked at all the evidence.”
“I see the same thing in Quality Improvement. Every time a team comes together, they all think they know what the right answer is.
Continue Reading "Detective Number Two"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Trendlines are often fake news. How can you separate fact from fiction? It’s easy.
“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“One of the things that really irritates me about Excel is it’ll add a trend line to any data, but it does not add a “goodness-of-fit” metric automatically. It’s called “R squared,” and R squared should be like .8 or 80% fit in general.
“I’ve seen lots of charts and lots of posters at lots of improvement conferences where the goodness of fit metric is less than 50%. What?! So it’s not really an improvement.
Continue Reading "If It Don’t Fit You Must Forget"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
There’s often more than one way to get an answer with statistics.
“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“The other week we had somebody call in and say, “Can you do XYZ stat?” Well, by that name I didn’t understand what they were talking about, but then I looked up XYZ stat and it was our ABC stat in the QI Macros. Right?
“There’s more than one way to do things in statistics. There’s all kinds of things, all right? I just found out about something called Dixon’s Q and Grubbs’ Outlier Test for small samples… okay.
Continue Reading "More than One Way to Ken a Stat"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
DMAIC suggests that we need to Define and Measure something. Doing it manually won’t work long term. Here’s why:
“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I have an Apple iPhone and I carry it along and it has a little Health app in it. At the end of the day I can open it up and see how many steps I did that day: 3,000, 5,000, 8,000… whatever it is. It’ll tell me if it was above or below what I’ve done for the last weeks or so.
“What I want you to do is get this idea about measurement: Measurement, as much as possible, should be automated so that it just happens… it just happens.
Continue Reading "Automate Measurements to Sustain Improvement"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Is it possible to learn anything quickly? To go from Zero to Hero in just a few hours? Yes, I believe so. Here’s why:
“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I may have told this story before, but it bears repeating again. About eight years ago I was in Hawaii and I found out there was a free ukulele class next door taught by a guy named Jason: Jason Jerome [with] Lahaina Music. Now, Lahaina Music just burnt down [in the 2023 wildfires] but Jason is still teaching classes up and down West Maui.
Continue Reading "Zero to Hero"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
In Six Sigma we keep hearing the same messages over and over. Are they wisdom or just tradition?
“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I saw a quote the other day that I really liked, which said, “Traditional wisdom is often more tradition than wisdom.” I think around the Quality Improvement world we keep hearing the same old stuff: “You must have top leadership commitment.” That’d be great, but that doesn’t mean that that’s what you’re going to get. You need to be the one doing the Quality Improvement stuff. If you’re waiting on your leadership team to get on board, good luck to you.
Continue Reading "Traditional Wisdom"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Don't waste time on simple problems. Start with the worst first!
Continue Reading "Start With The Worst First"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
