Deming and Six Sigma

Posted on July 15, 2005 by John Hunter

The first Curious Cat Management Improvement blog post was on the Six Sigma and Deming Philosophies

Recently the Deming Electronic Network has returned to this topic (broken link removed).

The Quality Advisor web site has an article on this topic: Deming and Six Sigma (broken link so removed):

The Six Sigma process can be seen to offer a parallel to Deming’s Plan-Do-Study-Act Cycle, although Six Sigma brings experimental design and regression analysis to the forefront in the “plan” phase. Six Sigma also emphasizes design as a key function for achieving six sigma performance levels, and devotes attention to planning the design phase of production. Deming, too, emphasized “Plan” in his four-state cycle, promoting the importance of establishing a relationship between desired output and required input as well as necessary production processes.

Perhaps the most striking difference between the approaches is Deming’s focus on the responsibilities of management, outlined in his “The 14 Obligations of Management,” and “The Deadly Diseases.” The Six Sigma approach, by contrast, lays out a more rigid structure of roles and responsibilities throughout an organization, including executive management, a senior champion, deployment champions, project champions, deployment master black belts, project master black belts, project black belts, process owners, and six sigma green belts.

What would Deming do? [link broken so I removed it] by David R. Schwinn

I started thinking that it might be interesting to ask, “What would Deming do (WWDD)?” as it relates to Six Sigma theory and practice…

The site doesn’t provide links form one part to the next so here those links are:

[More links broken so I removed them. People that manage web sites really shouldn’t waste incoming links by breaking them. I keep hoping finally people will adopt this simple idea that has been well know for more than a decade but still people keep doing it.]

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Fashion-Incubator on Deming’s Ideas

Posted on July 15, 2005 by John Hunter

Be corrigible [the broken link was removed]:

For example, I was sold on Deming years ago but people still aren’t talking about his ideas. If there were a Nobel prize for manufacturing, Deming should have won it

It is true Deming’s ideas do not get the attention they deserve, in my opinion. However, it is interesting to note the recent BBC radio program on Deming (available online) and Business Week including him in their list of the Top 25: Influential Business Leaders. Our Curious Cat Deming Connections is an attempt to provide quick and easy access to resources on his ideas including many great articles.

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The Quality of Lean

Posted on July 15, 2005 by John Hunter

The Quality of Lean [the broken link was removed] post on Evolving Excellence.

Lean has become so popular that companies (especially General Motors) have been snatching up lean experts, especially those with true TPS experience. Toyota itself is having difficulty finding and training appropriate people for their new plants, and in many cases are having to rely on the Lean experts at their component suppliers. This has even led to Toyota outsourcing Lean management for some plants

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Management is Prediction

Posted on July 14, 2005 by John Hunter

re: post on prediction [link broken, so removed] on the Deming Electronic Network, Petter Ogland wrote:

…that intelligence more or less boils down to updating a predictive model of the world. As far as I can see, this is the C.I. Lewis epistemology that Shewhart and Deming based their philosophy upon.

…but is there any kind of operational definition for ‘prediction’ that would explain what Deming means when he uses this word in various contexts?

I think your first point is correct, which I see as: learning by predicting, then looking at the result and then adjusting understanding to this new information is very powerful.

I believe Deming’s thoughts about prediction are most effectively put into action using the PDSA cycle. Specifically, you must predict the results in the planning phase (prior to piloting improvements). I find that this is rarely done. I don’t think the form of that prediction is critical (narrative with loose numerical guesses, precise numerical prediction…). The critical issue is making the prediction, then comparing the results to that prediction and then figuring out how your original understanding can be improved based on the new data.

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Fast Company Interview: Jeff Immelt

Posted on July 14, 2005 by John Hunter

Fast Company Interview: Jeff Immelt, CEO, GE.

What makes a growth leader today, and how does that differ from the sort of leader who was effective at GE in the past?

GE has always been a believer in leadership development. When the economy was growing 5% a year, when oil was $14 a barrel, and when the world was at peace, the science of management was all about the how-to. That was the how-to generation. You didn’t have to think about the what. Instead, there were management initiatives such as Six Sigma, which was the how.

So most of management literature, certainly for the past 10 years, was all about the how-to. I think we’re now in the what-and-where generation. Global economies are slow and more volatile. Oil is at $50 a barrel. So this ability to pick markets, growth trends, customers, and to do segmentation — that is management today. We have a generation of people who know how to do process flow charts. We have a generation of people who know how to do quality function deployment and things like that, but don’t necessarily know why we’re doing them. What’s the what and the where? I believe that wholeheartedly. Nothing is completely black and white, but we are in a completely different cycle of what good managers know how to do.

I must say this doesn’t make much sense to me, but I am not the CEO of a huge company so maybe I just don’t understand. I don’t see any reason why managers in the past shouldn’t have had the qualities he seems to be saying are needed now. And I don’t see any reason why the qualities needed now were not needed in the past. This sure seems like a bunch of words saying nothing to me: perhaps I just don’t see the wonderful cloths the emperor has on.

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Managing Fear

Posted on July 12, 2005 by John Hunter

The post, Root Causes of Crunch Mode [the broken link was removed] from the Game Manager blog makes the good point that

Fear and anxiety are known to reduce comprehension and learning ability. W. Edwards Deming made “drive out fear” one of his 14 management changes America needed to make in order to compete with Japan. Fear is a valuable physiological reaction in some situations, but fear make(s) it difficult to think, and thinking is generally superior to fighting in most corporate settings.

A good article on this topic is, Managing Fear by Gerald Suarez (who I worked with for several years). There are also 3 videos on this topic by Dr. Suarez, available from Management Wisdom, the producers of the Deming Library videos [the broken link was removed]. I must admit I didn’t really understand the effects of fear and anxiety on performance until hearing Dr. Suarez speak on the topic many years ago.

From the Managing Fear article:

Fear erodes joy in work, limits communication, and stifles innovation. Fear fosters short-term thinking as people search to avoid reprisal, perhaps at the expense of others in the system.

Fear also produces questionable data, as people tend to focus on eliminating the threat instead of working to achieve the desired positive outcomes.

See previous post: Targets Distorting the System

John Hunter

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, quote, Respect | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Could Toyota Fix GM

Posted on July 10, 2005 by John Hunter

re: Thomas L. Friedman: Save us, O Toyota based on Thomas L. Friedman article in the Herald Tribune Save us, O Toyota [the broken link was removed] where he states:

I have a question: If I am rooting for General Motors to go bankrupt and be bought out by Toyota, does that make me a bad person? It’s not that I want any autoworker to lose his or her job, but I think the only hope for GM’s workers, and maybe even our country, is with Toyota.

The Lean Manufacturing blog post asks: “if Toyota bought or merged with GM, could Toyota “fix” GM?”

Yes, Toyota could fix GM. Even the right leaders and managers, within GM, could fix GM but it is a huge long term job and it would be harder to do it internally because you will have to do it while competing with Toyota. Also they have some difficult issues to deal with since their previous managers did not tihnk of the long term (20-50 years out from the decisions they were making in the 70s though 90s).

I wouldn’t buy GM if I were Toyota, though. Why bother. Just grow Toyota, it is working very well so far. It makes sense to buy if you need to grow quickly to gain critical mass, or you will lose the opportunity to grow early in a fast moving market. High tech companies (like Cisco and Intel) often do well buying other companies – but just as often high tech companies make more mistakes buying than is justified by the successes.

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Posted in Management, Management Articles | 1 Comment

The Art of Lean

Posted on July 10, 2005 by John Hunter

The Art of Lean [the broken link was removed], by Michael Rovito, The Sunday Challenger, Kentucky

The lean style is the process of eliminating all waste in a manufacturing company by streamlining and simplifying shipping.

Three key tools, according to Martichenko, make for a successful lean style: increased frequency of deliveries, reduction of lot size for those deliveries and leveling the flow of material in a plant throughout the week.

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Millennium Development Goals

Posted on July 9, 2005 by John Hunter

re: Six Sigma Training for the G-8?

Interestingly Prime minstrel Blair recently showed an understanding of systems thinking (specifically how targets can result in worse performance, when targets result in distortion of the system rather than improvement). In the targets in health care case the easy “politics of the warm fuzzy feeling” would be to declare victory in setting targets. In that case PM Blair realized that while the data might look better the actual results might not necessarily be better (when the system is distorted or the data is distorted).

Measures are a proxy for the actual situation and far too often people forget the proxy nature of data in process improvement.

I would agree the target of a .7% of GDP as a aid goal is an activity/input measure. It is like measuring the amount of dollars spent on polio vaccination. Often (though to a lesser extent today than 10 years ago) the amount of money being spent is used as the measure of how much is being done (instead of a measure of outcomes). The best measure for the polio example, is the reduction, or elimination of polio in the population. The amount of money being spent is a measure that tells you something; but an outcome/result measure of polio within the population, is what should be used to measure success. At the same time, without the commitment of funds by the government to the vaccination program (and, in fact, research and development before that) the resulting reduction in polio would not have been achieved.
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Toyota as Homebuilder

Posted on July 8, 2005 by John Hunter

Topic: Management Improvement

Toyota Home – Applying the Toyota Production System to Home Building (broken link removed) from Evolving Excellence

Toyota is all about cars and trucks, right? Not quite. I was just pointed to the Toyota Home [the broken link was removed] page on Toyota’s website, which briefly describes Toyota’s activities in the home building industry.

From Toyota’s web site:

Toyota Home – building 21st century comfort and luxury into houses in Japan. Come inside and see for yourself.

Concentrating the knowledge and technology of the Toyota Group to the housing business, Toyota’s house making is based on the “Skeleton & Infill” approach. Based on careful consideration of customer lifestyles, three different structures have been developed for the Toyota Home line-up.

I often find myself wishing I could deal with Toyota instead of whatever company I am getting poor results from. The Evolving Excellence post mentions “Lean Construction is not really new.” Not only that, queuing theory, lean thinking (in general), customer focus and process improvement are not unformed concepts that need a great deal of work before they can be applied in the real world.

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Posted in Customer focus, Management, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments