Tag Archives: Quality tools

Quality of the Entire Customer Experience

Posted on March 14, 2018 by John Hunter

There is a difference in the way many organizations are managed today and managing with an understanding of your organization as a system aligned toward customer focused continual improvement. The ability to create great customer experiences is much easier with a management system based on customer focused continual improvement principles than one without. Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , , , , , ,

Improving Management with Tools and Knowledge

Posted on May 10, 2017 by John Hunter

Too often today I hear people disparaging management tools/concepts (PDSA cycle, mistake proofing, flowcharts, design of experiments, gemba…). The frequently voiced notion is that tools are being applied and not helping improve management in the organization. But it seems to me using these tools re-enforce the best practices of management improvement. Yes, ignoring the underlying principles (while applying tools and concepts) drastically limits how successful an organization will be in improving management practices (and limits the results the organization will … Continue reading →

Posted in Quality tools, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Applying Improvement Concepts and Tools to Your Daily Life

Posted on July 7, 2015 by John Hunter

This month the ASQ Influential Voices is taking a bit different approach. This month we are looking at applying quality tools in our personal life based on the post from other influential voice, Sunil Kaushik: How Lean Helped Me Travel To Egypt With Just $500. Sunil is on a nomadic trip around the world to learn and enjoy the experience while also helping others applying lean thinking. I just returned from my own nomadic adventure. I have experience applying quality … Continue reading →

Posted in Quality tools, Travel photos | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Visual Management and Mistake-Proofing for Prescription Pills

Posted on May 5, 2015 by John Hunter

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 make visually obvious what is important for people to know. Mistake proofing is often really mistake-making-more-difficult (for some reason this term of mine hasn’t caught on). I believe mistake-proofing should put barriers in the process that make a mistake hard. … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Magnetic White-Board Kanban Card Options

Posted on September 2, 2014 by John Hunter

Just some quick ideas for Kanban whiteboard magnetic card options from a question I answered on Reddit. Here is the best lean solution: Trying Out My Agile Kanban Board from Jon Miller. Why, well mainly I am kidding about it being the best, but if you don’t read his Gemba Panta Rei blog you should! Go add it to your RSS feed reader, before you continue with this post. Ok, welcome back. In addition to thinking his blog is great … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Quality tools | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Root Cause, Interactions, Robustness and Design of Experiments

Posted on June 18, 2014 by John Hunter

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 those components–the best root cause explanation we might hope for is a description of the interactions and variation at a moment in time. How can we make such an explanation useful? A single root cause is rare. Normally you can … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Process improvement, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

George Box Webcast on Statistical Design in Quality Improvement

Posted on June 11, 2014 by John Hunter

George Box lecture on Statistical Design in Quality Improvement at the Second International Tampere Conference in Statistics, University of Tampere, Finland (1987). Early on he shows a graph showing the problems with American cars steady over a 10 years period. Then he overlays the results for Japanese cars which show a steady and significant decline of the same period. Those who didn’t get to see presentations before power point also get a chance to see old school, hand drawn, overhead … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Data, Innovation, Management, Process improvement, Psychology, Quality tools, Science, Statistics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Interview on PDSA, Deming, Strategy and More

Posted on May 8, 2014 by John Hunter

Bill Fox interviewed me and has posted part one of the interview on his web site: Predicting Results in the Planning Stage (sorry, the link has been hijacked to forward to an unrelated page [so obviously I removed the link], I have posted the interview which can now be reached here): Bill: John, what is your best process improvement strategy or tactic that has worked well for you or your clients? John: I would say the PDSA improvement cycle and … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Resources for Using the PDSA Cycle to Improve Results

Posted on October 28, 2013 by John Hunter

Using the PDSA cycle (plan-do-study-act) well is critical to building a effective management system. This post provides some resources to help use the improvement cycle well. I have several posts on this blog about using the PDSA cycle to improve results including: keys to the effective use of the PDSA cycle Richard Feynman Explains the PDSA Cycle Tom Nolan on the PDSA cycle The authors and consultants with Associates for Process Improvement have the greatest collection of useful writing on … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Jeff Bezos: Innovation, Experiments and Long Term Thinking

Posted on September 4, 2013 by John Hunter

Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. He has long showed a willingness to take a long term view at Amazon. He is taking that same thinking to the Washington Post: In my experience, the way invention, innovation and change happen is [through] team effort. There’s no lone genius who figures it all out and sends down the magic formula. You study, you debate, you brainstorm and the answers start to emerge. It takes time. Nothing happens quickly in this mode. … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Innovation, Process improvement | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Design of Experiments: The Process of Discovery is Iterative

Posted on July 30, 2013 by John Hunter

This video is another excerpt on the design of experiments videos by George Box, see previous posts: Introduction to Fractional Factorial Designed Experiments and The Art of Discovery. This video looks at learning about experimental design using paper helicopters (the paper linked there may be of interest to you also). [the video is no longer available online] In this example a screening experiment was done first to find those factors that have the largest impact on results. Once the most … Continue reading →

Posted in Design of Experiments, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, Statistics | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Stated Versus Revealed Preference

Posted on July 9, 2013 by John Hunter

My father provided me a good example of the flawed thinking of relying on stated preference when I was growing up. Stated preference is, as you might deduce, the preferences voiced by customers when you ask. This is certainly useful but people’s stated preference often do not match there actions. And for a business, actions that lead to customers are more important than claims potential customers make about what will make them customers. His example was that if you ask … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Popular, Psychology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Management Blog Review 2012: Gemba Walkabout

Posted on January 9, 2013 by John Hunter

This is my second, of two, 2012 management blog review posts. In this post I look back at the last year on Mike Stoecklein’s Gemba Walkabout blog. Mike is the Director of Network Operations at Thedacare Center for Healthcare Value. In a very long post, Some thoughts on guiding principles, values & behaviors, he provides a sensibly explanation for one the real difficulties organization have making progress beyond a certain point (project success but failure to succeed in transforming the … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Deming, Health care, Process improvement | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Special Cause Signal Isn’t Proof A Special Cause Exists

Posted on October 3, 2012 by John Hunter

One of my pet peeves is when people say that a point outside the control limits is a special cause. It is not. It is an indication that it likely a special cause exists, and that special cause thinking is the correct strategy to use to seek improvement. But that doesn’t mean there definitely was a special cause – it could be a false signal. This post relies on an understand of control charts and common and special causes (review … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Manufacturing, Process improvement, Quality tools, quote, Six sigma, Statistics, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

5s at NASA

Posted on September 11, 2012 by John Hunter

NASA did some amazing things culminating with landing on Moon. Much of what they did was doing many small things very well. They used 5s, checklists, gemba thinking, usability, simplicity, testing out on a small scale and much more. Here are a few photos from the Smithsonian Air and Space museum in Washington DC. I also have some nicer NASA 5s photos from the new Annex near Dulles Airport, but, ironically, I can’t find them. These kits were used by … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Quality tools, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Value Stream Mapping for Fun and Profit

Posted on July 24, 2012 by John Hunter

Guest post by Evan Durant, author of the Kaizen Notebook blog [The broken link was removed]. I tend to get a little preachy about the importance of value stream maps, but they really can be useful tools not only to plan an improvement effort but also to monitor your progress going forward. In particular they provide a way to quantify the impact of changes to your process. Here’s a real life example as a case in point. For a particular … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Quality tools | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment