Improvement Insights Blog

If you believe you need to add more people, ask yourself if lack of labor force is truly the problem. Instead, it’s likely that the process itself needs refinement. Here’s why:

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“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].

“I was rereading Tim Ferrris’s book, “The 4-Hour Work Week,” and he mentions in there… he says, “Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production. Using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems. So refine rules and processes before adding people.”

“I was in the phone company, we had a whole project where the outside plant installation repair people thought they needed more people. And I worked on it for like a day and a half and I said, “No, we need less repair.” But they wanted to use Quality Improvement to prove that they needed more people. They knew the outcome they wanted and they wanted to chase that and they refused… they refused to go figure out how to have less repair. When half the calls to your company are for repair, guess what? You’ve got a problem with repair. Go figure out how to fix that.

“All right, so that’s my Improvement [Insight]for this week. Don’t add people, fix processes. Simplify. Streamline. Optimize. Make them so that they are fast, affordable, flawless. This works everywhere: Healthcare, manufacturing, you name it.

“That’s my Improvement Insight. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”