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My career was dipped in various management methods such as MBO and MBWA. Recently I read a new term: Management by Spreadsheet (MBS). Maybe there’s a better way.
“When I was working at the phone company we had a variety of management fads. I think first there was MBO, or “Management By Objectives.” Of course, that assumed that you know what your objectives were. We had MBWA, “Management By Wandering Around,” so the management team was wandering around all the time and just getting in our way. Recently I saw a different phraseology and I kind of liked it: MBS, which stands for “Management By Spreadsheet.”
“You know, if you think about it, there’s very few people who can actually read a spreadsheet and get intelligence out of it.
Continue Reading "Management By Control Chart"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
There’s still time to register for this afternoon’s FREE QI Macros webinar, January 9th at 1:00PM MST. Sign up by clicking THIS link.
IHI set a goal to reduce healthcare waste by 50% by 2025. Here’s how to do it with the Trillion Dollar Prescription.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals.” We were just out at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement conference in Orlando, Florida. [There were] like, 4500 medical doctors and nurses and CNO’s and CNMO’s and people all involved in improving healthcare quality. This is their 31st annual conference. (I can tell you based on what I was looking at on the posters, people are not really aggressively going after change…)
“The IHI announced that it’s tackling what they call the “Trillion-Dollar Checkbook.” Their goal is to cut health care waste by 50% by 2025 – that’s five years from now.
Continue Reading "IHI’s Trillion Dollar Aim – Reduce Healthcare Waste by 50% by 2025"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, healthcare, Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
More than 50 people signed up for this webinar, with Jay Arthur demonstrating how to use some of the useful features of QI Macros, as well as some of the new features introduced in recent releases of the software.
Some attendees were familiar with the software and already use it, some had only begun to use it; all were interested in learning new ways that QI Macros can help them with their Agile Lean Six Sigma and Quality Improvement efforts. (You can hear him answering questions and comments typed in by webinar 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 Templates Wizard, the Fixed Limit indicator or the automated Process Change Wizard), you may need to purchase an upgrade to bring your QI Macros to the current version.
Continue Reading "*Latest webinar: 1/9/20 QI Macros Webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Excel, QI Macros, Webinar.
What do Christus Health, Novartis and Underwriters Laboratories have in common? In the last few years they’ve rediscovered the essence of Agile Lean Six Sigma. Here’s How:
“Every year we go out to these conferences and trade shows and exhibit the QI Macros, and I get a chance to go see some of the presentations that people are doing. About two years ago I started to notice an interesting trend, and so I got some observations out of this whole thing.
“So about two years ago, I was at the Lean Six Sigma conference in Phoenix and Christus Health was presenting about their quality journey.
Continue Reading "Agile Process Innovation Case Studies"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
Some people think they have to climb Mount Everest or do a fire walk to overcome their fears. Maybe it’s just as easy to do the thing you are afraid to do in your normal life. Maybe it’s time to climb Mount Quality. Maybe it’s time to create a hassle-free experience for your company’s customers.
“My wife’s been watching these shows about people climbing Mount Everest. You see people, they’re waiting for the final the final [ascent] and there’s a huge queue of people waiting to go up to the top of Mount Everest… (It’s like [maybe] they should put in an express lane or something!) It [seems] like everybody’s doing it.
Continue Reading "Climbing Mount Quality"
Posted by Jay Arthur in healthcare, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
What charts do you need to stay safe and in control?
“Most of you have driven on a highway. It may have been a two-lane rural [road] or a four-lane interstate, but you know that the lines on each side of the road help you stay on track, keep you safe and know that you’re going in the right direction.
“But if you’ve ever driven in a blizzard, you know all those lines are totally obscured and you can hardly see. I had to go over Raton Pass once upon a time driving from Denver to Tucson to see my parents, and it was a pouring blizzard and I could barely see where I was going.
Continue Reading "Line Charts Are Like Driving in a Blizzard"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Six Sigma.
A recent report from NAHQ (National Association of Healthcare Quality) found that three-quarters of hospitals had a quality department. But to achieve hassle-free healthcare and zero harm, it will take more than a department to achieve the results desired.
“The National Association for Healthcare Quality just released a report on Quality professionals in health care, and it turns out that in a lot of the situations, about three-quarters of the people responding reported that in their hospital or wherever, that Quality was a department, and in about a quarter [of the responses] Quality was individuals working on stuff.
“Let me be clear about this: Quality is not a department.
Continue Reading "Quality Is Not a Department"
Posted by Jay Arthur in healthcare, Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
Some people get confused about what ought to be and what is, especially in Lean Six Sigma. 21st Century Quality requires us to work on what is, not on what ought to be.
“I was reading Psychology Today and the editor’s introduction kind of caught my attention. She was talking about what they call “The Moralistic Fallacy.” This fallacy is committed when a truth that disturbs people is deemed false. I see quite a bit of this actually in Quality Improvement. It’s the difference between “What Ought To Be” versus “What Is.”
“When we talk about Quality, “Leadership should be on board with Quality…” Well, they are on board with Quality.
Continue Reading "What Ought To Be vs What Is"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Six Sigma.
Several attendees told me they had ripped out their line charts and started using Control Charts for their KPIs. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“We were out at the National Association for Healthcare Quality conference; I was speaking and we were exhibiting there. After I spoke, I had a couple people come up to me who said they’d seen me at the previous year’s convention talking about how to improve things and how line [charts] and bar charts can be harming patients and they said, “You know, I went back to my hospital and we ripped out all of our line charts and we put in control charts for all of our key process indicators.
Continue Reading "Control Charts for KPIs"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, healthcare, Improvement Insights, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
No matter how well you design something using DFSS, users will find ways to use it or break it in ways you can’t imagine!
“In Six Sigma we have all these tools for designing for Six Sigma, so we have Quality Function Deployment and Failure Modes and Effects Analysis and all this other stuff; PPAP forms in automotive to help you design an entire sub-assembly or whatever it is… but what are these things designed to do?
“Well, they’re designed to help you come up with something that’ll come out at least a four signal level, maybe a four and a half signal level, but one of the things I’ve learned from software is “No design survives contact with the end user.” Somehow, they find ways to break stuff that you hadn’t even thought of, right?
Continue Reading "No Design Survives Contact with the End User"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog, Lean, Six Sigma.
