Improvement Insights Blog
The 4-50 for Emission Testing
Denver requires emission testing for cars over a certain age. But it may not be necessary. Here’s why:
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“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I live in Denver, Colorado. You know, we used to get in the winter… we’d call it ‘the brown cloud,’ right? So they decided that we had to test every car every few years just to try and do emission testing and figure out which ones were polluting. But there was a guy here that invented a little tool that could detect cars that are polluting as they drive by. It turns out that this is like the 4-50 rule: only 5% of the cars – five out of 100 – are producing 55% of the emissions.
“So, why are we punishing the masses for the sins of the few? With a little automated testing, we could pinpoint whose car is polluting and stop them and give them a ticket and a citation to go fix stuff. Why do we have these massive places where you have to go stand in line to get your car checked when your car may not be a problem?
“Now, they do have some testing stations where if you drive by often enough in your car and it detects that your car does not pollute, then you won’t be required to go get it tested, but that seems lame to me. If five cars out of a hundred are producing over half the emissions, let’s find and fix those. It might be cheaper to just help them get whatever they need to get their car to run more efficiently than to have all these giant testing stations.
“That’s my Improvement Insight for this week. Let’s go out and improve something. Let’s find the 4-50 and fix that – and just that – and not punish the masses for the sins of the few.”
