Tag Archives: webcast

Using Data to Improve – Quality is a Journey to Excellence

Quality is a Journey to Excellence is a 2 day management seminar that Bill Hunter (my father) recorded in 1985 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The embedded clip shows the fourth section of a the seminar on using data to improve. meetings can go very smoothly and directly to solutions and get a lot of things done if somebody just brings the data. And if there is no data the only basis on which you can have a discussion is everybody’s … Continue reading →

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Quality is a Journey to Excellence – Improving the System

Quality is a Journey to Excellence is a 2 day management seminar that Bill Hunter (my father) recorded in 1985 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The embedded clip shows the third section of a the seminar on improving the system. Deming has this pithy way of putting a lot of the problems along those lines and what he says is: “Lets play American industry and we’ll make toast. I’ll burn and you scrape.” These links provide more details on ideas he … Continue reading →

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Design Your Organization to Serve Customers Well

Quality is a Journey to Excellence is a 2 day management seminar that Bill Hunter (my father) recorded in 1985 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The embedded clip shows the second section of a the seminar discussing customers and how to organize your systems to serve customers well. See part one of the seminar, and the full seminar. Some aspects of managing an organization well are quite challenging. But some aspects really are not and yet we still often fail to … Continue reading →

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Interview of Bill Hunter: Statistical Variability and Interactions

Interview of Bill Hunter on Statistical Variability and Interactions by Peter Scholtes, 1986: In this interview Bill Hunter describes how results are made up of the impact and interactions of many variables. Many of those variables we don’t know about or account for. What we normally do is try to figure out the most important variables for processes and then experiment with those variables to find the best options given what we are trying to achieve. Often the description of … Continue reading →

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Interview of Bill Hunter: Improving Quality and Productivity in Organizations

Interview of William G. Hunter on Improving Quality and Productivity in Organizations by Peter Scholtes. Bill taught a course at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Improving Quality and Productivity in Organizations, which was co-sponsored by the business school, statistics department and industrial engineering department. There were a few undergraduate students, more graduate students and even more students who were working full time (many of whom only took this course – they were not pursuing a degree at the university). … Continue reading →

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Bell Labs Designing a New Phone System Using Idealized Design

I remember hearing this same story when Russ Ackoff spoke at the Hunter Conference on Quality (which was named in honor of my father) in Madison, Wisconsin. If you haven’t heard this story you are in for a treat. And if you haven’t heard Russell Ackoff before you get to enjoy a great storyteller. "Tape" of Ackoff’s Bell Lab Lecture at the US Navy. If you would limit yourself to paying attention to 5 thinkers to advance your understanding of … Continue reading →

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Transform the Management System by Experimenting, Iterating and Adopting Standard Work

In this short video, Dr. John Toussaint describes how ThedaCare applied leadership standard work to create a successful management transformation. The changes to the management system were tested by applying standard work for all positions in 2 parts of the organization (including all senior management positions) and learning and adapting and then spreading the new methods to the rest of the organization. Changes to the management system require the same testing and piloting of changes on a small scale as … Continue reading →

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George Box Webcast on Statistical Design in Quality Improvement

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 →

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Cognition: How Your Mind Can Amaze and Betray You

The webcast above is from the excellent folks at Crash Course. This webcast provides another view into the area of Deming’s management system on the theory of knowledge (the one most people forget), how we know what we know and how that belief isn’t always right. Two of the four components of Dr. Deming’s management system were about our brains (psychology is the other) which makes a great deal of sense when you think about how focused he was on … Continue reading →

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Steve Jobs on Quality, Business and Joseph Juran

This webcast shows an interesting interview with Steve Jobs when he was with NeXT computer. He discusses quality, business and the experience of working with Dr. Juran at NeXT computer. The video is likely from around 1991. America’s in a tough spot right now, I think. I think we have forgotten the basics. We were so prosperous for so long that we took so many things for granted. And we forgot how much work it took to build and sustain … Continue reading →

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The Art of Discovery

Quality and The Art of Discovery by Professor George Box (1990): Quotes by George Box in the video: “I think of statistical methods as the use of science to make sense of numbers” “The scientific method is how we increase the rate at which we find things out.” “I think the quality revolution is nothing more, or less, than the dramatic expansion of the of scientific problem solving using informed observation and directed experimentation to find out more about the … Continue reading →

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Introductory Videos on Using Design of Experiments to Improve Results

The video shows Stu Hunter discussing design of experiments in 1966. It might be a bit slow going at first but the full set of videos really does give you a quick overview of the many important aspects of design of experiments including factorial designed experiments, fractional factorial design, blocking and response surface design. It really is quite good, if you find the start too slow for you skip down to the second video and watch it. My guess is, … Continue reading →

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The Need to Improve Management While Building Organizations Fit For Human Beings

[embedded video link broken, so that code was removed but you can watch the video by following this link: Gary Hamel: Reinventing the Technology of Human Accomplishment. I agree with Gary Hamel that we need to adopt new management strategies. I happen to believe most of new strategies we need to adopt have been known for decades, we just fail to implement many of them. He argues it is hard to retain knowledge advantages (within companies). I agree. However execution … Continue reading →

Posted in Competition, Deming, Innovation, Management, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Toyota Kata Song – The Times They Are Changing

Very well done song, Toyota Kata – Managing by Means, by Doug Hendren – to the music of “The Times They are A-changing” by Bob Dylan. Doug sounds impressively similar to Dylan and the words are actually wonderful. Managing by results, it don’t work anymore. Don’t stand in your office, go to the shop floor … to really improve you must iterate, see our problems as treasures before its too late, and eliminate waste, whether little or great. Take baby … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Lean thinking, webcast | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Customer Focus and Internet Travel Search

The internet should make finding airline flight information easy. Instead it is a huge pain. Hipmunk has taken on the challenge of doing this well, and I think they have done a great job. This video provides an excellent view of both web usability and customer focus. This is a great example of focusing on providing customer value and using technology to make things easy – which is done far to little at most companies. Related: Innovation Example (Farecast – … Continue reading →

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A Theory of a System for Educators and Managers

Excerpts from The Deming Library Volume XXI, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Dr. Russell Ackoff and David Langford demonstrate that educators can begin a quality transformation by developing an understanding of the properties and powers of systems-oriented thinking. You can order the entire video, as well as the rest of The Deming Library. Great stuff! If you enjoy this blog (the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog), you definitely should watch this webcast. This video has some great insight into education, learning … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Deming, Education, Management, quote, Systems thinking, webcast | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments