Home »
Blog » quality improvement
Posts tagged "quality improvement"
Over 50 people signed up for this webinar, with Jay Arthur demonstrating how to achieve both the goal of “zero harm” as well as IHI’s goal of cutting healthcare waste by 50% by 2025.
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. 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: 10/21/20 Healthcare Zero Harm / Trillion Dollar Prescription Webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Webinar.
I learned to drive on a stick shift. Then automatic transmissions came along. What have you learned the hard way that has been simplified and automated? How much time and suffering could you save by embracing the automatic transmissions available in Quality Improvement?
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].
“Now way back in the 60s when I was learning to drive (yes, I’m that old) they had the student [car], but it had a “three on the column” manual shift – an old Chevy Caprice or something like that.
Continue Reading "Embrace the Automatic Transmission"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
Leaders, managers and programmers sometimes get frustrated with software systems and try to rewrite them. This usually fails. It is possible to use Six Sigma and the 4-50 rule to find and fix the few code modules that have the most bugs and require the most enhancements. This delivers software quality without the high cost and risk. Here’s how:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].
“Today I want to talk to you about software. Now, some of you may work in software, some of you may use software… (If you have a phone, you’re using software) There’s lots of software around, and sometimes there’s bugs and stuff like that, and sometimes we’re enhancing things.
Continue Reading "Accelerating Software Quality Using the 4-50 Rule"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
Six Sigma isn’t just for business. You can use it to make your life more hassle-free. Here’s how: Become the CIO of Your Life.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].
“I used to walk my dog Coco on the High Line Canal that runs for about 73 miles throughout Denver. I’d take her for a walk and she’d go running around, but she’d pick up these cockleburs. A cocklebur plant stands about waist-high, has big broad leaves and it produces these little spiny things about the size of the top of my thumb that has little hooky things all around it.
Continue Reading "Cut The Cockleburs for Hassle-Free Living"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Quality improvement isn’t very infectious, is it? What can we do to make it more contagious? As you can imagine, it can’t take weeks to catch the bug. Here’s a way to spread to idea faster.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I got to thinking about the pandemic: in COVID-19, for every one person that gets in infected, they infect like three other people. That’s why it’s such a problem, right? It’s much more infectious than even the flu is. I thought about that in terms of Quality Improvement. Whether you call it: Lean Six Sigma, Operational Excellence, Process Improvement… I don’t care what you call it, it’s Quality Improvement to me.
Continue Reading "Making Quality Improvement More Contagious"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Jay Arthur Blog.
Recessions are a great time to improve quality. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“Now [at first in] the pandemic, everybody projected that this was going to be one of the sharpest recessions in history, and then bounce right back. I think the ongoing concern about Coronavirus and everything else is actually going to slow that down a little bit.
“Well, one of the things I know from going through lots of recessions so far is that is the perfect time to take a step back from your business. When you take a step back from your business you can start to look at it and [think], “How can we make it faster, better, cheaper?
Continue Reading "Recessions Are Good For Quality"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Yankee Spirit (50% reduction in delay, defects and deviation) is easy to achieve. It’s imperative. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“When I first got started in Quality Improvement, our training folks talked about Yankee Spirit as a method of setting a goal. What’s Yankee Spirit? Well, Yankee Spirit is simply a 50% reduction in delay, defects and deviation.
“Well, that just sounds like we’re just taking a dartboard throwing a thing at it, but it was years later that I realized that this is actually scientifically doable. As I started to look at it, Pareto’s rule says 20% of what you do produces 80% of the waste, rework, lost profit, patient harm… whatever you want to call it.
Continue Reading "Yankee Spirit Goal Setting"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Line charts with trend lines can be misleading. They can provide a kind of “false positive” that implies improvement where there is none. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Agile Process Innovation.”
“I go to all these trade shows and I see a lot of poster presentations but they’re using line charts and then they draw a trend line through them and then they say, “Oh, we made an improvement.” No you didn’t. If it doesn’t really fit the line very well, if your goodness-of-fit metric is less than 80%, I’m not buying it. But nobody gives me a goodness-of-fit metric called r-squared, they just show me a line graph or a bar chart and then they show a little line through it.
Continue Reading "Trends Are Not Always Improvements"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Breast Cancer is Rare, yet we subject women to mammograms to try to detect it. False positives are 20X higher than true positives. Deming said: “Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.”
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified,” “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals,” and the QI Macros [software].
“I found another interesting item in Malcolm Gladwell’s book; again, it was in the back notes. They were talking about mammograms. Breast cancer itself is really rare, it’s like less than a half of 1% of women who get a mammogram actually have cancer, so it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Continue Reading "Mammograms are a Type of Inspection"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
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.
Continue Reading "Why Are People Using Line and Bar Charts, not Control Charts?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
