{"id":7485,"date":"2025-06-03T01:00:41","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T07:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/?p=7485"},"modified":"2025-04-24T14:04:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T20:04:06","slug":"human-error-and-system-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/human-error-and-system-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Human Error and System Design"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>All too often I hear people say: &#8220;It&#8217;s just human error.&#8221; No it&#8217;s not. Here&#8217;s why:<\/p>\r\n<p>Download my free ebook, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/pdf\/Agile-Process-Innovation.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1043946410?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>&#8220;Hi, I&#8217;m Jay Arthur, author of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Lean-Six-Sigma-Hospitals-Improving\/dp\/1259641082\/\">Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals<\/a>\u201d and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/demo\/\">QI Macros [software]<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;I was talking to somebody the other day, and we were talking about things in general, and they said, \u201cWell, you know, it&#8217;s just human error.\u201d And I said, no, stop. There\u2019s no such thing as human error.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Now, I know that&#8217;s a limiting sort of thought, but I believe that systems let people make mistakes. And if you get the systems right, people can&#8217;t make those mistakes anymore.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;My car won&#8217;t let me forget that I&#8217;m coming up too fast on another car that&#8217;s stopped in the middle of the road, and it&#8217;ll start beeping at me, and if I don&#8217;t do anything, it&#8217;ll slam on the brakes. Do you get this idea?<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) had [a book] \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/25077248\/\">To Err Is Human<\/a>\u201d. No, it&#8217;s not. It&#8217;s systems error. They let people make mistakes. Any time you hear somebody say, \u201cOh, it&#8217;s just human error,\u201d you can stop them right there and say they&#8217;re just too lazy to sit down and figure out how the system let them make that error.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;So, that&#8217;s my Improvement Insight. Let&#8217;s go out and improve something this week, like one of the systems that is letting people make stupid mistakes. Let&#8217;s have some fun out there.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All too often I hear people say: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just human error.&rdquo; No it&rsquo;s not. Here&rsquo;s why: Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results. &#65279; &ldquo;Hi, I&rsquo;m Jay Arthur, author of &ldquo;Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals&rdquo; and QI Macros [software]. &ldquo;I was talking to somebody the other day, and we were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7749,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[308,168,170,609],"class_list":["post-7485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvement-insights","tag-human-error","tag-qi-macros","tag-six-sigma","tag-system-error"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7485"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7728,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7485\/revisions\/7728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}