Trying to solve quality problems can sometimes seem like you are trying to move a mountain with a spoon. It can seem impossible and even too daunting to begin. But what if you could make a big impact on your quality without doing much at all?
There is a principle called the 80/20 rule or Pareto rule. In the early 1900s, an Economist found that 80% of the wealth in the world is controlled by 20% of the population. Since then, Economists and professionals in almost every other field have applied this theory over and over again to find versions of it to be true. It is not always 80/20, but it is some unbalanced proportion. In come cases it could be 70/30 while in other cases it could be 98/2.
Take a salad for instance. 80% of your calories usually come from the dressing as does 80% of the flavor.
So, how can we apply this to solving quality issues. First, you have to know what is causing the quality issue. You can do this by breaking down processes. Start by detailing out your process in a numbered list. List the number of quality issues you have experienced that were caused by each step in the process. Take the part of the process that has the most quality issues and focus only on that part of the process. You will soon find that you can tackle half of your quality issues by focusing on just one or two steps in the process.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Friday, January 25, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
My 3 Favorite Time Management Tips
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| © Kovac | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos |
Here is a list of some of my favorite Time Management Tips.
- Use a Timer - When you set a timer for a specific amount of time, this will stimulate your brain to get busy and knock out the task at hand. It may not happen that easily in the beginning, but once you start using this method, it becomes a challenge to the brain. The brain loves a challenge, believe it or not, and will start going to work when you give it a task. I actually use this technique with my daughter to help her do her homework as well.
- Plan Ahead - The best time to plan now is not now. You should have planned it earlier. On my most productive days at work, I start each day with writing down exactly what I will accomplish that day.
- Eat that Frog - When you look at your task list each morning, pick out your least favorite task and do it first, just get it out of the way. This frees up the rest of your day to focus on the things you actually enjoy doing.
When it comes to time management, there is no one size fits all. So I recommend reading quite a few different books on the subject and pick the Time Management Tips that work for you.
Some of my other favorite Time Management Tips come from the following books:
I'm curious to hear from you. What is your favorite time management tip?
Monday, January 14, 2013
Convential Wisdom Heaval - How to Stuff 100 envelopes
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| © Redbaron | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos |
· Option #1 – Batch. Line up all the supplies and fold all the inserts at one time. Once all inserts are folded, move on to stuffing all the envelopes, and then closing all the envelopes, next addressing the envelopes, and then stamping the envelopes.
· Option #2 – Piece by Piece. Start with the first envelope, fold the insert, stuff the envelope, close the envelope, address it and put a stamp on it. Move on to the second envelope.
Many people would say to Batch the work for a more efficient process. This is what America was built on – the assembly line of work. And…you would be wrong.
There has been much research on this particular process and researchers discovered that Option 2, Piece by Piece, is the fastest way to work. There are also positive side effects on quality. Any quality issues can be caught earlier in the process when you do the piece by piece process. Let’s take the envelope example where you were inserting two different folded pieces of paper and an address card in the envelope. If the address card was the incorrect size, you would not discover it until you folded two hundred pieces of paper using the batch method. However, using the piece by piece method, you would discover the quality issue after folding just two pieces of paper.
Another added benefit of this process is that you get your first item out the door more quickly. If you started the process at 11:00 a.m. and the mail pickup was at noon, you could get some of the envelopes in the mail that day using the piece by piece method. However, using the batch method, all envelopes would go into the mail the next day.
I encourage you to challenge conventional wisdom with your processes. Where does it make sense to stop doing batch work to improve quality and speed?
I first read about the envelope test the Lean Startup. Get your copy at Amazon Today.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Stop Quality Mistakes Now! Using Checklists
Service and technology companies suffer quality issues just the same as companies who produce physical products. The difference is you don't see their "recalls" in the news or return something to the store. Instead, you get upset and never return to the business or the website.
So how can service and technology companies address quality issues? One quick way is to use checklists.
An article was published in the New Yorker explains how checklists are being used in Medicine to eliminate quality errors. According to the article, in Intensive Care Units, "They found that the average patient required a hundred and seventy-eight individual actions per day, ranging from administering a drug to suctioning the lungs, and every one of them posed risks. Remarkably, the nurses and doctors were observed to make an error in just one per cent of these actions—but that still amounted to an average of two errors a day with every patient." One of the common quality infections were line infections (infections getting into an IV line). Line infections are so common that they are considered a routine complication. I.C.U.s put five million lines into patients each year, and national statistics show that, after ten days, four per cent of those lines become infected. Line infections occur in eighty thousand people a year in the United States, and are fatal between five and twenty-eight per cent of the time, depending on how sick one is at the start. Those who survive line infections spend on average a week longer in intensive care.
Most services and technology companies are growing more and more specialized to handle the complexities of their work. This has been happening in medicine for years now.
The article reports that, "We now live in the era of the super-specialist—of clinicians who have taken the time to practice at one narrow thing until they can do it better than anyone who hasn’t. Super-specialists have two advantages over ordinary specialists: greater knowledge of the details that matter and an ability to handle the complexities of the job. There are degrees of complexity, though, and intensive-care medicine has grown so far beyond ordinary complexity that avoiding daily mistakes is proving impossible even for our super-specialists. The I.C.U., with its spectacular successes and frequent failures, therefore poses a distinctive challenge: what do you do when expertise is not enough?"
A pioneering doctor, Pronovost, documented what it would take to eliminate these mistakes. "On a sheet of plain paper, he plotted out the steps to take in order to avoid infections when putting a line in. Doctors are supposed to (1) wash their hands with soap, (2) clean the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic, (3) put sterile drapes over the entire patient, (4) wear a sterile mask, hat, gown, and gloves, and (5) put a sterile dressing over the catheter site once the line is in. Check, check, check, check, check. These steps are no-brainers; they have been known and taught for years. So it seemed silly to make a checklist just for them. Still, Pronovost asked the nurses in his I.C.U. to observe the doctors for a month as they put lines into patients, and record how often they completed each step. In more than a third of patients, they skipped at least one. The next month, he and his team persuaded the hospital administration to authorize nurses to stop doctors if they saw them skipping a step on the checklist; nurses were also to ask them each day whether any lines ought to be removed, so as not to leave them in longer than necessary. This was revolutionary." "Pronovost and his colleagues monitored what happened for a year afterward. The results were so dramatic that they weren’t sure whether to believe them: the ten-day line-infection rate went from eleven per cent to zero. So they followed patients for fifteen more months. Only two line infections occurred during the entire period. They calculated that, in this one hospital, the checklist had prevented forty-three infections and eight deaths, and saved two million dollars in costs."
Everyone can improve quality at your company, and often times it comes in some of the simplest forms. Think about what check list you can make for an every day task you do?
Image Courtesy of: © Seahorse | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos
So how can service and technology companies address quality issues? One quick way is to use checklists.
An article was published in the New Yorker explains how checklists are being used in Medicine to eliminate quality errors. According to the article, in Intensive Care Units, "They found that the average patient required a hundred and seventy-eight individual actions per day, ranging from administering a drug to suctioning the lungs, and every one of them posed risks. Remarkably, the nurses and doctors were observed to make an error in just one per cent of these actions—but that still amounted to an average of two errors a day with every patient." One of the common quality infections were line infections (infections getting into an IV line). Line infections are so common that they are considered a routine complication. I.C.U.s put five million lines into patients each year, and national statistics show that, after ten days, four per cent of those lines become infected. Line infections occur in eighty thousand people a year in the United States, and are fatal between five and twenty-eight per cent of the time, depending on how sick one is at the start. Those who survive line infections spend on average a week longer in intensive care.
Most services and technology companies are growing more and more specialized to handle the complexities of their work. This has been happening in medicine for years now.
The article reports that, "We now live in the era of the super-specialist—of clinicians who have taken the time to practice at one narrow thing until they can do it better than anyone who hasn’t. Super-specialists have two advantages over ordinary specialists: greater knowledge of the details that matter and an ability to handle the complexities of the job. There are degrees of complexity, though, and intensive-care medicine has grown so far beyond ordinary complexity that avoiding daily mistakes is proving impossible even for our super-specialists. The I.C.U., with its spectacular successes and frequent failures, therefore poses a distinctive challenge: what do you do when expertise is not enough?"
A pioneering doctor, Pronovost, documented what it would take to eliminate these mistakes. "On a sheet of plain paper, he plotted out the steps to take in order to avoid infections when putting a line in. Doctors are supposed to (1) wash their hands with soap, (2) clean the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic, (3) put sterile drapes over the entire patient, (4) wear a sterile mask, hat, gown, and gloves, and (5) put a sterile dressing over the catheter site once the line is in. Check, check, check, check, check. These steps are no-brainers; they have been known and taught for years. So it seemed silly to make a checklist just for them. Still, Pronovost asked the nurses in his I.C.U. to observe the doctors for a month as they put lines into patients, and record how often they completed each step. In more than a third of patients, they skipped at least one. The next month, he and his team persuaded the hospital administration to authorize nurses to stop doctors if they saw them skipping a step on the checklist; nurses were also to ask them each day whether any lines ought to be removed, so as not to leave them in longer than necessary. This was revolutionary." "Pronovost and his colleagues monitored what happened for a year afterward. The results were so dramatic that they weren’t sure whether to believe them: the ten-day line-infection rate went from eleven per cent to zero. So they followed patients for fifteen more months. Only two line infections occurred during the entire period. They calculated that, in this one hospital, the checklist had prevented forty-three infections and eight deaths, and saved two million dollars in costs."
Everyone can improve quality at your company, and often times it comes in some of the simplest forms. Think about what check list you can make for an every day task you do?
Find more Books by Dr. Pronovost 
Image Courtesy of: © Seahorse | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Improving Quality in Tech Startups
In the book The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
, Eric Ries talks about improving quality in fast moving environments. Many quality issues happen over and over again because the root cause is never really addressed. A very simple way to get to the root cause of an issue is to act like a 2 year old and keep asking why - in fact, ask it five times.
Here is a scenario that happened to me recently - my car would not start.
, Eric Ries talks about improving quality in fast moving environments. Many quality issues happen over and over again because the root cause is never really addressed. A very simple way to get to the root cause of an issue is to act like a 2 year old and keep asking why - in fact, ask it five times.
Here is a scenario that happened to me recently - my car would not start.
- #1 Why did your car not start? My battery was dead. You could stop here and replace your battery, but without knowing why your battery died in the first place you run the risk of waking up the next morning with a dead battery again.
- #2 Why did your battery die? I left my lights on.
- #3 Why did you leave your lights on? My headlight switch was set to On instead of Auto.
- #4 Why was your light switch set to On instead of Auto? When I took it to the mechanic, it was changed from Auto to On.
- #5 Why did the mechanic change the light switch? When I dropped the car off, the Mechanic drove it into the garage. When he got out of the car, the lights did not go off immediately so he turned them off. When he got back in the car to drive it back to me, he turned the light switch to On.
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