Tag Archives: process thinking

Add Constraints to Processes Carefully

Take great care in adding constraints to processes to avoid doing so needlessly. Online you will frequently find forms that have required fields that needn’t be. Certainly if you were designing with focus on what is best for customers those … Continue reading

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Visual Management and Mistake-Proofing for Prescription Pills

Good ideas often just require some sensible thought to think of an improved approach. Management concepts can help guide such thinking, such as mistake-proofing and visual management. To apply visual management requires giving a bit of thought to how to … Continue reading

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The Value of Professional Conferences. Also Why Has There Been So Little Innovation?

In the most recent ASQ Influential Voices post, Julia McIntosh takes a look at the costs and benefits of professionals attending conferences. I still remember being in high school and George Box talking about the primary value of conferences was … Continue reading

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Peter Drucker Discussing The Work of Juran, Deming and Himself

In this clip Peter Drucker talks about Japan and his work there as well as the work of W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran. His discussion highlights how he remembers the Japanese were so willing to take new ideas and … Continue reading

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Root Cause, Interactions, Robustness and Design of Experiments

Eric Budd asked on The W. Edwards Deming Institute group (LinkedIn broke the link with a register wall so I removed the link): If observed performance/behavior in a system is a result of the interactions between components–and variation exists in … Continue reading

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Practicing Mistake-Promoting Instead of Mistake-Proofing at Apple

Mistake proofing is a wonderful management concept. Design systems not just to be effective when everything goes right but designing them so mistakes are prevented. I have had several bad customer experiences in the short time I have had my … Continue reading

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Poor Results Should be Addressed by Improving the System Not Blaming Individuals

My response to: Where is the Deming study that asserts most errors are in organization or process? There is no such study, it is based on Dr. Deming’s experience as I discuss in 94% Belongs to the System (improve the … Continue reading

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Bad Weather is Part of the Transportation System

The job of managers is to create a robust system that delivers value to customers. A system that fails constantly (fails during the continual variation the system faces) is a failed system. Bad weather is part of the variation airlines … Continue reading

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Epidemic of Diagnoses

What’s Making Us Sick Is an Epidemic of Diagnoses by Dr. Welch, Dr. Schwartz and Dr. Woloshin: For most Americans, the biggest health threat is not avian flu, West Nile or mad cow disease. It’s our health-care system. True, and … Continue reading

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How to Improve

My management philosophy is guided by the idea of seeking methods that will be most effective.* There are many ways to improve. Good management systems are about seeking systemic adoption of the most effective solutions. What this amounts to is … Continue reading

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