Blog posts on process improvement

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Resources for Using the PDSA Cycle to Improve Results

  "Using the PDSA cycle (plan-do-study-act) well is critical to building a effective management system..."   

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• The Art of Discovery with George Box

  Great video of George Box on the process improvement process.

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• Improving Problem Solving

  suggest reading this excellent paper on Improving Problem Solving by Ian Bradbury and Gipsie Ranney. As they note, problem solving is not a substitute for innovation and improvement as solving a problem solving only returns you to the status quo. The paper also considers the relationship between problem solving and system improvement.

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• But, That Won't Work Here

  George Box, a good friend (and a close colleague to my father), put the problem of getting new ideas adopted this way (from Management Matters by John Hunter):

  1. It won’t work
  2. It won’t work here
  3. I thought of it first

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• Mistake Proofing and Mistake Making Less Easy

  Making it harder to make mistakes and making them more visible is good. Preventing them is even better.

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• Risks Should be Taken Wisely

  Accepting risk doesn't mean failure is good. And it doesn't mean the results of experiments are all blameless. You can do a poor job of taking risks. If that is done, we should learn from it and improve how we take risks going forward.

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• George Box Webcast on Statistical Design in Quality Improvement

  There is great value in creating iterative processes with fast feedback to those attempting to design and improve. Box and Deming (with rapid turns of the PDSA cycle) and others promoted this 20, 30 and 40 years ago and now we get the same ideas tweaked for startups. The lean startup stuff is as closely related to Box’s ideas of experimentation as an iterative process as it is to anything else.

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• Root Cause, Interactions, Robustness and Design of Experiments

  A single root cause is rare. Normally you can look at the question a bit differently see the scope a bit differently and get a different “root cause.” In my opinion “root cause” is more a decision about what is an effective way to improve the system right now rather than finding a scientifically valid “root cause.”

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• Peter Drucker Discussing The Work of Juran, Deming and Himself

  Drucker talked about the shared importance he, Deming and Juran put on the importance of valuing all employees and creating management systems that capture all the value they can offer. He spoke of all 3 of them tilted against those that believed in command and control business organizations. Sadly the lack of respect for all workers is still common today; but it is much better than is was due to the work of these 3 management experts.

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• Take Advantage of the Strengths Each Person Brings to Work

  Managers should be setting up the organization to take maximum advantage of the strengths of the people in the organization while minimizing the impact of weaknesses.

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• Leadership While Viewing the Organization as a System

  Over time, I have become more and more focused on the overall system and figuring out how to look at whatever problem we're having within a larger context. And I find that usually leads me to a better solution. There are a couple of ways to see this in respect to leadership.

  The first one is when you have one of Deming's deadly diseases (or his 14 points), like the mobility of top management...

   

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• Reducing Waste - Zero Waste to Landfill

  A great improvement strategy. Determine what you are trying to do. Understand the system. Set up process measures that measure that system. Improve the system and track the results. Repeat. Maintain focus over the long term. Result: success.

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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.

  ...

  But guess what, the unnecessary steps Apple decided to force me through are broken so I can’t just waste my time to make them happy. No. They have created a failure point where they never should have forced the customer in the first place.

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• Toyota Special Report: Thinking Production System

  This short article is peppered with many great quotes as section headers:

  • In TPS, the T also stands for Thinking
  • To cut lead-time, cut out all the bits that don't add value.
  • The line must stop if there is a problem.
  • Ask yourself Why? five times.
  • Develop people who can come up with unique ideas.

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• Root Cause - Addressing Systemic Causes Not Symptoms

  It isn't that there is this "true root cause" that created the current problem. There is a way to look at the issue and find a deeper cause that will allow you to address it and improve the future performance of the system.
  
  Depending on how you look at the problem there can be many different "root causes" that are sensible from their different perspectives. The important thing is by aiming to fix root/systemic problems you will not just treat the current symptom you are dealing with today but eliminate future problems from occurring.

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