Category Archives: Popular

Management Training Program

Fog Creek Software Management Training Program by Joel Spolsky: Finally, when you’re really really good, they let you hang around with Yussef on the ovens. Yussef was about 100 years old and so good at running the ovens it was … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, IT, Management, Popular, quote, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Purpose of an Organization

W. Edwards Deming described the purpose of an organization in New Economics, on page 51, as: The aim proposed here for any organization is for everybody to gain – stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, community, the environment – over the long … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Management, Popular, quote, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 23 Comments

10 stocks for 10 years

Topic: Investment I decided to look at selecting a portfolio of stocks I would be comfortable putting into an IRA for 10 years. My main criteria was companies with a history of large positive cash flow (that seemed likely to … Continue reading

Posted in Investing, Popular | 17 Comments

USA Health Care Costs reach 15.3% of GDP – the highest percentage ever

re: Health Care Spending In The United States Slows For The First Time In Seven Years The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services) issued a report (the press release … Continue reading

Posted in Economics, Health care, Popular, quote | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Management Improvement History

I do believe we need to improve our practice of Quality (and to do that we need to understand what happened in the past and why it was not more successful). The idea that Design of Experiments (DoE) was at the core of some Quality Movement to me is not at all accurate. In my experience only a few Quality professionals today understand what it means and how it should be applied. The idea that it was common place in the 40’s I seriously doubt (though I don’t have first hand knowledge of this). I find it difficult to believe we would have decided to stop using DoE if it was commonly done previously. The understanding I have from those that should know (like George Box and previously my father – Bill Hunter) is that it was not at all common practice and still is not outside of a few industries and even there it is isolated in the domain of a few experts. Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Design of Experiments, Lean thinking, Management, Popular, Process improvement, Quality tools, Six sigma, Statistics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data

We use data to act as a proxy for some results of the system. Often people forget that the end result is not for the number to be improved but for the situation to be improved. We hope, if the measure improves the situation will have improved. But there are many reasons this may not be the case (one number improving at the expense of other parts of the system, the failure of the number to accurately serve as a proxy, distorting numbers, etc.). Continue reading

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Popular, quote, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments