{"id":8440,"date":"2026-10-27T01:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T07:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/?p=8440"},"modified":"2026-09-28T14:27:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T20:27:04","slug":"we-dont-make-widgets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/we-dont-make-widgets\/","title":{"rendered":"We Don&#8217;t Make Widgets"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unlike manufacturing, service industries don&#8217;t make widgets&#8211;pistons, brake pads, etc. That means service industries need a small Six Sigma toolkit.<\/p>\r\n<p><em>Download my free ebook, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/pdf\/Agile-Process-Innovation.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Agile Process Innovation &#8211; Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1207437998?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 class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Hi, I&#8217;m Jay Arthur, author of \u201cLean Six Sigma for Hospitals\u201d and QI Macros [software].<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Some years ago I read a book called \u201cWe Don&#8217;t Make Widgets,\u201d about a guy who&#8217;s talking about how in government, we don&#8217;t make a thing. We don&#8217;t make a piston or a\u2026 whatever\u2026 a guitar pick. It doesn&#8217;t matter what it is. We don&#8217;t make those things.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;What do we make? Well, probably 90+ percent of America\u2019s folks work in service industries. We make transactions. What? You know: orders, invoicing, purchasing, payments\u2026 you know, we make things that are transactional. We make driver&#8217;s licenses. Right? We make passports. We make whatever it is, but most of it is a transactional thing.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m going to tell you right up front that a lot of the things we teach in Green Belt and Black Belt training are not useful unless you&#8217;re working on making widgets. DOE? That&#8217;s a widget thing. I&#8217;ve yet to see a good service-oriented DOE project.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Now, I just want you to think about&#8230; if you work in the service side of the business, whether you&#8217;re in manufacturing or healthcare or banking, I don&#8217;t care &#8211; you don&#8217;t need to know every tool in the tool book. All you need to know is the Magnificent Seven Tools that I put in my Agile Lean Six Sigma book. And you need to know how to use those and use QI Macros to focus, improve, and sustain.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;You know, I&#8217;ve had people take my Yellow Belt training and they&#8217;ve saved $5 million for their company. More than once. And I talk to people and they go, &#8220;Jay, you know, it&#8217;s so easy to teach people how to use QI Macros. Select some data, click a button. Select some data, click a button.&#8221; It&#8217;s easy to teach. It&#8217;s easy to learn. You don&#8217;t have to be an expert to do it.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;I think we&#8217;ve made this entirely too complex because let&#8217;s face it: as consultants, we need more billable hours, so we want to teach you more stuff. Not that that&#8217;s good for you. It&#8217;s just that if you ever got one of those one or two percent jobs that are in manufacturing on a factory floor, yes, you need to know that. Otherwise, no.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Anyway, that&#8217;s my point of view. That&#8217;s my Improvement Insight for this week. You don&#8217;t need to know everything to do anything.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s go out and improve something this week.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlike manufacturing, service industries don&rsquo;t make widgets&ndash;pistons, brake pads, etc. That means service industries need a small Six Sigma toolkit. Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation &ndash; 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;Some years ago I read [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[679,680,170,681],"class_list":["post-8440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvement-insights","tag-manufcturing","tag-services","tag-six-sigma","tag-widges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8440","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=8440"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8567,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8440\/revisions\/8567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}