Podcasts about joseph juran

In this episode of Misunderstanding Quality, host Andrew Stotz and Bill Bellows discuss what not to measure when it comes to quality. Bill offers some great examples to show how organizations get it wrong, and how to get it right. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with Bill Bellows, we're gonna have a lot of fun, who has spent 31 plus years now that it's 2025, helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunities in the episode, today is episode 11, and the title is "To Improve Quality, Don't Measure Quality". Bill, take it away.   0:00:35.6 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew. And, so the title of episode 10, came from chapter 10... Chapter 1 of The New Economics, and I used a quote from Dr. Deming, which was, "Are you in favor of the improvement of quality?" Which Dr. Deming says, "Are you in favor of the improvement of quality? We can have a national referendum, yes or no?" Everyone says yes. Then he says... Then he say, "We could have a secret ballot." And... But I... At the beginning of the podcast, I had said, "Are you in favor of quality?" And it's... No, it's, "Are you in favor of the improvement of quality?" And so today I wanna, in episode 11, share it with our listeners and viewers, more of the profound insights from Genichi Taguchi. But I think, what I was just thinking is saying, "Are you in favor of quality?" And I've used that quote, which now I now realize it's a misquote. It's not, "Are you in favor of quality?" It's "Are you in favor of improvement of quality?" But in seminars, what I've done is used the quote, the misquote, I would say Dr. Deming would ask, "Are you in favor of quality?" And he would say, "We're gonna have a secret ballot. Is everyone in favor of ballot?" In quality, everyone says yes. So I would go through that.   0:02:16.3 Bill Bellows: And then I would go to the next question, and I would say to the audience, I'd say, "Okay. Dr. Deming made reference to secret ballot. So I wanna do a secret ballot. I want you to close your eyes, and I'm gonna ask you a question, and if your answer is yes, raise your hand. But I want you to close your eyes when you raise your hand, 'cause I don't want you to raise your hand 'cause everybody else does. Okay, so close your eyes." And I say, "Are you in favor of teamwork?" And all the hands go up. [laughter] And it's not so much "Are you in favor of improvement of teamwork?" But it's the idea that, acceptability saying this part is acceptable, as we've shared in prior episodes, is the essence of looking at that part, my task, my effort in isolation. And what that has to do with teamwork, I question. Now, with a few of us at Rocketdyne years ago used to talk about, we would say, you give out a term paper assignment, the term paper must be between 10 and 20 pages long. And what happens? They're close to 10 pages. Then I would share, we'd tell Allison, our daughter, I'd say when she was in high school, "Be home by between 8:00 and 10 o'clock," and she shows up around 10 o'clock.   0:03:51.6 Bill Bellows: And I would show a distribution over there. Then I would say, "What about a machinist? The machinist is given a hole to machine. And what does machinist do is machine the hole on the low side, and then a machinist is machining the outer diameter of a shaft or a tube. And what does machinist do? Machines to the high side." And so I would show those four distributions either on the low side or the high side, and say, "What do they all have in common?" And people would say, "Each of those people's looking out for themself. They're focusing on their work in isolation." Then I would say, "So what do you call that in a non-Deming company or in a... " In the first podcast there is a, called it a Red Pen Company or a ME organization, or a Last Straw companies... What do you call that behavior where people look at the requirements and say, "What's best for me?" What do you call that? What do you call, people scratch their head? We say... You ready? "Teamwork."   [laughter]   0:05:00.6 Bill Bellows: And everybody laughs. And then I turn to somebody in class and I say, "So Andrew, are you a team player?" And Andrew says, "Yes." And I say, "Andrew, if you machine the holes to the low side, are you a team player?" And you might say, "I'm not sure." And I would say, "Say yes." And you'd say, "Okay. I say yes." And I say, "Okay, Andrew, who's on your team?" And you say, "Me." "So, oh, you are a team player, man."   0:05:24.2 Andrew Stotz: I'm a team player. Team Andrew always wins.   0:05:28.2 Bill Bellows: Yeah. And I would say, so I say, "In a non-Deming company, everyone's a team player. All right. But who's on the team?" So I would say to people, "You'd be a fool not to be on your own team. The only question is, who else is on your team?" All right. Back to Dr. Taguchi to improve quality, don't measure quality. And I was, got into this in an explanation with some others recently, and somebody was showing me a bunch of defect rate data involving some process. And the question was, how to apply this occurrence of defect rate data to Dr. Taguchi's loss function. And so, again, reminder to our listeners, acceptability is everything that meets requirements is okay. Either I am unaware of differences or the differences don't matter, any parking spot, any professor any Thermo 2, any doctor and desirability is "I want this doctor, this parking spot, this, this, this, this, this." And so not just anything that meets requirements.   0:06:50.3 Bill Bellows: And Dr. Taguchi's work has a lot to do with that thinking. And Andrew, yeah, I'm on a month, on a regular basis, meeting more and more people that are listening to the podcast and reaching out to me on LinkedIn. And one shared with me recently then, and he started to listen to this series, and he said, he never thought about desirability. He says everything he knows, everything he sees every day, is acceptability. And he's like, "You mean, there's more than that?" And it's like, "Hello. That's what our series is trying to do." So...   0:07:26.6 Andrew Stotz: And let me introduce you to door number three, which opens you up into this whole 'nother world of...   0:07:35.6 Bill Bellows: Yes.   0:07:35.7 Andrew Stotz: The interconnectedness and understanding quality from the impact on all the different parts of the organization, not just the one thing and the one area. Yep.   0:07:46.6 Bill Bellows: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.   0:07:48.9 Andrew Stotz: But that's door number three. Now, we don't wanna go through that right off the bat, but when you go through it, unfortunately door number three disappears as you walk through it, and it's a wall...   [laughter]   0:08:00.4 Andrew Stotz: And you can't go back because now you understand that what is a system, what is the interconnectedness of everything, and once you see that, you can't unsee it.   0:08:09.6 Bill Bellows: That's right. Now, it's like, it's a holistic view in which... And a from a holistic perspective, parts don't exist, parts of exist, but everything is connected.   0:08:27.4 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:08:28.2 Bill Bellows: And what does that mean? So anyway...   0:08:30.1 Andrew Stotz: And just to put that into context, let's just take a car. A customer never buys a part. And they don't buy a jumble of parts, they buy the car. So to the customer's perspective, it's even more meaningless, the independent parts of that.   0:08:50.3 Bill Bellows: When I would go to Seattle and do training when Rocketdyne was owned by Boeing, and I'd be doing training for people working on commercial airplanes or 737s, 47s and whatnot. And one of the jokes I would use is that, "Hey, 747... " People went, "What's a 747?" How about 787? If I was today, I'd say "a 787 is not a bunch of parts that fly in close formation." But that is, the mindset is that... But anyway, so acceptability is looking at the parts in isolation, looking at things in isolation, it's assigning a grade to a student, it's performance appraisals, that's all about isolation, it's thinking, "I won the game, I get an award. I lost the game." All of that thinking, from engineering to, how we look at human resources, the idea that the savings add additional only works when the activities are independent. So that's all acceptability, looking at things in isolation. Desirability in this idea of a preferred value, I don't know that anyone contributed to that, besides Dr. Taguchi. In fact, this morning, I was talking with some friends overseas about Joseph Juran's work. And, do you remember last time you and I worked, I was sharing with them that our last podcast followed the last meeting I had with these friends in Europe. And I said that conversation led to our podcast conversation about Quality 4.0, and it's all acceptability, acceptability, acceptability, meet, meet, meet requirements.   0:10:35.6 Bill Bellows: This very conversation. And I said, I went back and did some research on what Joseph Juran... How Juran defined quality. 'Cause I looked at the ASQs definition of quality and it gave two definitions of quality, one attributed to Juran talking about quality as fitness for use, and then Philip Crosby's definition is, meeting requirements. But you may recall, I said, there is no explanation of how Dr. Deming defined quality. Yeah, maybe that will come. But, so I was sharing that with them, and also shared with them a model I've used. And it might have come up in our first series, but I think the classic model within organizations is, I work, I follow a bunch of steps to make a part, a thing, a module, something. And if all the requirements are met, I hand off to you, you're downstream. And then likewise, there's others in parallel with me that hand off good parts, good things to you. Because they're good, we can hand off to you. And then the model is you take the parts that are good and put them together, and because they are good, they fit. And then you pass that integrated component downstream where other integrated components come together. And we progressively go from, it could be that we're putting together the fuselage, somebody else is putting together the wings, and it's all coming together. And at the other end, it's an airplane.   0:12:22.5 Bill Bellows: And on every handoff we hand off what is, so the parts that are good fit, the components that are good fit together with other, then we turn the whole thing on, it works. And I show this flow to people and I say, "So what do you see going on in there?" And what eventually they start to see is that all the thinking is black and white, because they're good, they fit, because they fit, they fit, and when you turn it on, it works. There's nothing relative about that. And so I was sharing that with these folks this morning, and I said, after you and I spoke last time, went back and looked, and Juran talks about fitness for use, and the question was, is Juran's definition of fitness, absolute fitness or relative fitness? Meaning that there's a degree of good in the parts associated with desirability thinking, and if we've got degrees of good in the parts, then there's degrees of fit. And, well, it turns out there's plenty of reason to believe that Juran had a model of acceptability that the parts are good, then they fit. All to come back to what Dr. Taguchi is talking about in terms of improving quality, is improving quality from a variable perspective that there's degrees of good. And so now we go back to, to improve quality, don't measure quality. And I remember when he said that and we were dumbfounded, "Well, what do you mean by that?"   0:13:52.5 Bill Bellows: And then he would go on to explain, that traditionally, we look at the quality... The lack of quality of something. An inspector says, "There's a scratch on the door. There's a ding here. There's a crack there. There's a, the weld has a drop in it. The weld has porosity." You know what that means is that's not a... The quality inspector is looking for the absence of a crack, the absence of porosity and things like that. And it also parallels with what I learned from Ackoff, Russ would say, [chuckle] "Getting less of what you want doesn't get you what you want." So you could say, "I want less waste, less defects." Well, what is it you want? Again, the clarification is, Russ would say, "Getting less of what you don't want doesn't get you what you want." And likewise, Dr. Taguchi talked about, what is the function of the process? So if you're talking about, imagine on a washing machine, when you have a... Or a dryer, and you have a motor that's spinning, and around the motor is a belt that's spinning the drum. Well, the quality problem, classic quality problem could be that the belt slips, or the belt cracks, or the belt is vibrating.   0:15:28.3 Bill Bellows: Well, then you say, "Well, okay, what's the function of the belt?" Well, it's not about cracking. The function of the belt is to transmit energy from the motor to the drum. And if it does that really well over sustained periods of time, then that suggests there's probably less cracking going on and less slipping going on. But if you don't look at it from a function perspective and ask, "What's the function of the belt?" And move away from, "Well, I don't want it to crack and I don't want it to slip." Well, then tell me what you want it to do. What is it you want it to do? Now, let's get into more of what we do want. And then, and this is what's neat listening to Dr. Taguchi as an engineer, you say, "Well, okay, so what is the belt trying to do? It's trying to transmit energy." So if I can design the belt, and by changing the materials of the belt to transmit energy, under wide-ranging temperatures, wide-ranging usage conditions, if I do a good job of that, then I should see less cracking problems. Absent that, if I try to reduce the number of cracks, I may end up with a belt slipping more often. So then what happens is you end up trading one problem for another, which is not uncommon.   0:16:57.7 Bill Bellows: You go from, the cookies being undercooked to overcooked as opposed to saying, "What's the role of the baking process?" And he would say, "To transmit energy to the cookie in the precise amount. And if we have the precise amount and distribution, then that should work out." Now, relative to welding. Welding, there is, there may be a dozen different weld anomalies that inspectors are looking for, with X-rays, they see porosity, they see, what's called drop-through with the material and the weld, drops a little bit, which could result in a fatigue problem leading to cracking. Well, here Dr. Taguchi would say, "Well, what's the function of a weld?" Say, well, to join two pieces of material together with a given strength. And so you join them together. And then once they're joined together, now you run tests and you say, "I wanna... " It could be, "I wanna heat and cool the weld to see how it does with that. I wanna introduce vibration to the weld." And if you can show that under vibration, under wide-ranging changes in the environment, that the strength holds up, then by focusing on the strength, which is what you want, you end up with fewer quality problems. But it's turning things around and saying, "Not what I don't want, what do I want?"   0:18:35.3 Andrew Stotz: And...   0:18:36.4 Bill Bellows: And that's what... Go ahead. Go ahead. Andrew.   0:18:37.6 Andrew Stotz: There's two things. The more I think about this quote that you're talking about, to improve quality, don't measure quality, sometimes I think I got it, but sometimes I don't. I just wanna think about a couple of parallels. One of them is sometimes we say in the field of sales and marketing, we may say, "Fill your pipeline and your sales will happen." So focus on the beginning of the process. If you don't have a pipeline of people coming in to your company, into your sales team, there's nobody to sell. So that's an example. We also say sometimes, focus on the inputs and the outputs will take care of themselves. That's another way that we would use something similar. But I'm just curious, what does it mean by "Don't measure quality"?   0:19:25.0 Bill Bellows: Yeah. And that's a good question. I'd say, Taguchi's used to quality being the absence of defects. And quality is what the customer's complaining about. So he's saying, quality problems in terms of don't measure quality, he's saying, "So what are the quality problems?" "Oh, let me tell you, we've got porosity, we've got cracks, we've got drop-through, we've got cracking, cracking of the belt and slipping and the... " This is what people are complaining about. And what he's saying is, the customer's not articulating, "Hey, Andrew, improve the function." They're complaining about the... You just have to interpret that what they're saying is, you have to take where they are. They don't want it to crack. They want it to last longer. They want all these things and say... And the idea is, don't get sucked into what they don't want. Turn it around to, well then, I'm the engineer, and this is what Dr. Taguchi would say, "As an engineer, don't be dumbed down into the complaint world. Turn it around and say, what could you improve? What is the function of that thing you're selling?" And if you improve the function, because again, the beauty of talking about function, if you focus on problems, you eliminate one problem, create another problem, then another problem. Now you're just... And what...   0:21:00.8 Andrew Stotz: So it's whack-a-mole...   0:21:02.3 Bill Bellows: Exactly.   0:21:03.6 Andrew Stotz: It's whack-a-mole in the back end of the process without the awareness of, "What are the customer's needs and how do we understand whether we're hitting the mark?" And...   0:21:12.7 Bill Bellows: Oh, and this is what Dr. Taguchi used to call as whack-a-mole engineering. It's what Ackoff would say, "Today's problems come from yesterday's solutions."   0:21:24.6 Andrew Stotz: So just just to visualize that, can imagine going into a factory and saying, "Look at all these charts and how we reduce the defects of this and that. And this is... " We've reduced all these defects, but in fact, that could be out of touch with what the customer really needs at the end of that production.   0:21:44.1 Bill Bellows: Yes, it is... The beauty is, it is saying... And he would get really angry with people who got sucked into the rabbit hole of eliminating defects, scrap and rework and things like that. And just say... What he's trying to say is, "I want you to be smarter than that. I want you to start to think about what is the function of the machining process? What is the function of the welding process? What is the... " And what was neat was, I spent... On three different occasions, I spent a week with him, watching him engage every day with four teams. A team would come in for two hours, and he would discuss with them whatever the hardware was. I'm not at liberty to say what company it was. [laughter] But it was a really cool company.   0:22:56.9 Bill Bellows: And the people there invited me in because I learned at Dr. Deming's... I attended Dr. Deming's very last four-day seminar, and there met some people that were very close to him. And one of them shared that, there were people for many years, traveled with Dr. Deming. They found out where he was gonna be a given week, maybe called up his secretary Ceilia Kilian and, once he became, bonded when... And somehow Dr. Deming liked you. And then you would say, "Dr. Deming, I'm gonna take a week's vacation next summer. Where are you gonna be in June?" And he'd say, "Well, I'm gonna be at GM corporate headquarters." And what these people told me is that, they would be with him that week, whether he is doing a four-day seminar in Ohio. Now, I don't know who paid for it.   0:23:50.8 Andrew Stotz: No.   0:23:50.9 Bill Bellows: But he gave them access to be with him wherever he was. And one guy told me he was at some high-level GM meetings that week, and he said, "Dr. Deming is there and he and some others." And I think they may have been called "Deming Scholars". I know that term was used. But anyway, this guy was telling me they were there, and this GM executive comes over to him and it says to him, "So, who are you again?" And you say, "Andrew Stotz." And he says something like, "So what might I ask are your qualifications for being here?" And he says, "If Deming overheard that, Deming would turn to the executive, snap at him and say, 'These are my people. What are your qualifications?'" So anyway, inspired by that, I walked out of Dr. Deming's four-day seminar, called up a friend of mine who worked for Dr. Taguchi's company and said, "Deming had people travel with him. I wanna travel with Dr. Taguchi. I don't wanna go to a seminar. I wanna see him in action."   0:24:56.1 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:24:56.4 Bill Bellows: And I said, "Can we make that happen?" And it happened, and I got to go inside a company. The lawyers didn't know I was there. And I asked him, I said, to the lawyer, "Do I have to sign anything?" He said, "No. If we let the lawyers know you were here, you wouldn't be here. So, here are the rules. You can't tell anybody what happened, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." So I get to be a fly on the wall watching him. So, a team would come in and say, "Here's this stuff we're working on." And he would... And they had an approach, which would be, reducing defects or scrap rework. And then he would turn it around for the next hour and a half and get them thinking about function. And after the first week of doing this four times a day for five days, I walked out of there thinking, "There's five basic functions." I started to notice the patterns. And then the second time I did this, a team would come in and I'm thinking, "I know what he's gonna do. He's gonna... He has in mind a function model. And all these things relative to how things come together." And so I did that three times. But, it was neat to get my brain adapted to, "Okay, what's the function? Where's he gonna come? Where's he gonna come?"   0:26:16.0 Bill Bellows: And then I would... The people would present it, and I'm thinking, "I think it's gonna go for function five. Yep. Bingo." So that's what I just wanted to share with the audience tonight. Again, there's a lot of depth. I taught two 40-hour courses at Rocketdyne in Taguchi Methods. So, a 40-hour intro and a 40-hour more advanced. So all I wanted to cover tonight, is that wisdom of not being defect-focused, but for our audience to start thinking about, start to think about the function. In fact, when I was having this conversation with a colleague recently and, 'cause he's talking about turning defect rate, he was thinking turning defect rate data into a loss function. I said, "No, defect rate thinking is acceptability thinking, the loss function is desirability thinking. They don't go together." I said, "What I wanna know is what's causing the defects." And we start diving into what's causing the defects, we can turn it into a variable data as opposed to a discontinuous data. Anyway. And I just wanted to throw out... Go ahead, Andrew.   0:27:34.4 Andrew Stotz: To wrap this up, I'm thinking about, I like what you just said, "Stop being defect-focused." Replace that with...   0:27:44.5 Bill Bellows: What is it we're trying to accomplish?   0:27:47.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:27:48.2 Bill Bellows: If you say, "Well, we don't want defects." I know we don't want defects. But what do we want?   0:27:52.9 Andrew Stotz: Do we say replace it with outcome focus, customer focus? What would you say?   0:27:58.1 Bill Bellows: Yeah, well, absolutely it's customer focus. The idea is that, now you start to think in terms of, is what is the greater system in which this is used.   0:28:11.0 Andrew Stotz: Okay. So...   0:28:11.1 Bill Bellows: The defect thinking is just saying it doesn't fit, it doesn't meet requirements. But that doesn't tell me what you're trying to do.   0:28:17.0 Andrew Stotz: Okay. So I think I know what you're saying. Stop being defect-focused, and please walk through door number three.   0:28:25.3 Bill Bellows: Yes! Stop...   0:28:27.7 Andrew Stotz: And in door number three, you're gonna be aware of the customer, the next process, the next flow, the customer of your area and the ultimate customer, and start focusing on the needs and the desires of them, and bring that back in the chain of your process. And you'll be improving, you'll stop being focused on "Fix this, stop this. Don't do that." Let's not have any more of that, and you'll be more into, "Let's do this because this is going to drive a much better outcome, or the exact outcome that our customer wants."   0:29:05.2 Bill Bellows: Yeah, it is, which changes the hat. That may not be the purview of people in the quality organization. So, they're out there counting defects. This is not to say it's their job. Not that they're not in the loop, but it's turning to the people that are more aware... That are more in tune with functionality, which is likely gonna be that people designing the thing, thinking about what's the role of the windshield wiper? Is it to skip across the windshield? Is it to, which is, that chatter. No, we don't want the chatter. So what is it we do want? We want the windshield wiper to move smoothly. And what does that mean? It means at a given second, we want it to be... And this is where the smoothness functionality comes in that I saw Dr. Taguchi many times is, is saying at a given interval of seconds, it should be here, here, here, here, here. And if it does match those positions, then what have we done? We have improved the smoothness of the flow of the wiper blade, or whatever it is that thing.   0:30:21.5 Bill Bellows: And that's the type of thing I'm trying to introduce, in this short episode, people thinking about function, not the lack of quality, but what is it we're trying to achieve? Now, otherwise, we can also say, Ackoff would say, and Dr. Deming would agree with him, is that organizations aren't in business to make a profit. They're in business to do something really well. That's the function of the organization. And then profit is the result of that. As opposed to being profit focus, in which case you start to... You run it as a finance company and misunderstand the focus and you start believing in addition and you end up with a mess.   0:31:04.2 Andrew Stotz: So, let's end it with a cartoon that I saw in The Wall Street Journal. And in that cartoon, it was a couple of guys, young guys wearing suits, and they were talking to each other, and they were either, it was either in an MBA class or they were in a factory or something, and it said, "Things? I don't wanna make things. I wanna make money." [laughter] And the whole point is, money is the result of making great things.   0:31:38.3 Bill Bellows: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And that's why... And this is why I so enjoyed about listening to Ackoff, conversations with Russ... Conversations with Dr. Taguchi. And then reading Deming. I don't have any conversation with Dr. Deming and thinking of that there. They, each were astute enough to see the process, the means leading to the result. Tom Johnson would say, "The means are the ends in the making." So you have organizations that are either means-focused, which is process focus, versus, "Did you deliver the report? Did you deliver the thing?" And Dr. Deming's big thing is, by what method? Tom would say, "By what means?" So...   0:32:25.2 Andrew Stotz: All right. Well...   0:32:25.2 Bill Bellows: Anyway, that's what I wanted to expose our audience to tonight.   0:32:29.4 Andrew Stotz: There it is. They've been exposed. Ladies and gentlemen, the exposure has happened. Bill, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And if you wanna keep in touch with Bill, just find him on LinkedIn. And this is your host, Andrew Stotz. And I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. And you know this one, you can say it along with me 'cause I say it all the time. People are entitled to joy in work.

Everyone is in favor of improving quality, but what does that mean? In this episode Bill Bellows and Andrew Stotz discuss stories of meeting requirements, missing the mark, and what Dr. Deming said about how to do better. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussions with Bill Bellows, who has spent 31 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunities. And I guess now that we're into 2025, it's gonna be 32 years pretty soon. The episode for today is episode 10, are you in favor of quality? Bill, take it away.   0:00:33.5 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew, and Happy New Year.   0:00:35.1 Andrew Stotz: Happy New Year.   0:00:36.4 Bill Bellows: Happy New Year to our listeners. And yeah, so here we are episode 10 of Misunderstanding Quality. We got up to 22 episodes in our first series and then we'll have a follow-on series. One is I would like to thank those who took the invite to reach out to me on LinkedIn. And I've just started connecting with a few new people who are doing some interesting things involved in types of work that I'm not familiar with, it's just fascinating to listen to the types of issues they deal with. And they each come to me with an interest in Dr. Deming's work. So they're following the podcast series, this one, the others that you're doing, and they listen to all of them. And I'm not sure if they've contacted the others, but they've reached out to me. So I wanna once again say for those of you that are enjoying this conversation, my conversation with you, Andrew, then please reach out to me.   0:01:50.0 Bill Bellows: If you'd like to know more, that's one thing. The last episode was called Worse Than a Thief. And one thing I wanna mention, there's a bunch of meanings relative to being worse than a thief. One distinctly from Dr. Taguchi was... And I don't... He gave examples of manufacturers that made plastic sheeting for crops to protect the crops and his complaint was that they made it to the minimum side of the requirement. So there was a requirement on the thickness, so again, even if you have a 1mil thick here, we have in the States, there's you can buy plastic 1mil, which is 0.001 inch or something heavier. And so, and obviously, in the world of manufacturing, you're not gonna get exactly 0.001, it's gonna be a little low, a little high. So what Dr. Taguchi was referencing is companies in Japan that were making plastic sheeting that would be used for a number of things. But in particular, he talked about it, what if it's being used to protect crops?   0:03:19.8 Bill Bellows: And what if the manufacturers, to save money because they're buying the plastic by the pound, selling it by the yard, so they're gonna make it as thin as possible. And his concern was, so how much are you saving to make it as thin as possible? And what is the impact of being on the thin side when a crop is lost? And that was his reference to being worse than a thief, that you're saving a few pennies but costing the farmer the... Right? And so that could be... So that's a situation where there's a requirement, the requirement is met minimally. You and I reference that as leaving the bowling ball in the doorway, delivering to the absolute minimum, or I mean delivering to the minimum, the maximum of the requirement, whatever best suits me. So if I'm delivering to you a term paper and you as the professor say, "It must be between five and 10 pages," and I say, "Well, I'm gonna make it five pages."   0:04:23.9 Bill Bellows: If in another situation, [chuckle] an example, I guess is if when our daughter was in high school and we said, "Allison, make sure you're home between 10:00 and midnight," then she may move that to the high side of the tolerance and come home at 10:00 or 11:59. But in either case, what Taguchi is referencing is in the world of acceptability, the requirements have been met. But the worse than a thief aspect is, is what is the personal gain versus the impact to others in the system. So that could be picking up the nail in the parking lot or deciding not to do it. So I just wanna point out that I see that as a very broad statement, not just in terms of meeting requirements, but within your organization are you... To what degree are you focusing on your department at the detriment of the organization? That's another way of being worse than a thief.   0:05:28.7 Bill Bellows: It could be you're spending all of your budget just before the end of the year. 'Cause you know what happens, Andrew, if you don't spend all of your budget.   0:05:38.0 Andrew Stotz: Gonna get taken away.   0:05:38.9 Bill Bellows: So if you're 10 percent under, the next year you're gonna get 10% less. So I used to kid people is, so what will I spend... Again, so you learn the hard way, if you don't spend the entire budget then your boss the next year says, "Well, Andrew, you only spent 80% of the budget, so we're only gonna give you 80% of last year." So what's the... What message does Andrew learn? I tell people is you go a little bit over the 100%, right? You go a little bit over. And so even that I would say is worse than a thief 'cause what are you doing? You're withholding your resources that others may find. So I just wanna say that that statement is not as narrow as looking at a set of requirements, it is looking at things from what's good for me versus good for the system. All right, have fun to that one.   0:06:30.0 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:06:31.0 Bill Bellows: So relative to the title you mentioned. Are you in favor of quality? What inspired that? There's another thing I've been looking at recently, whether on LinkedIn or elsewhere on the internet. I'm a member of ASQ, the American Society for Quality, so I get regular notes from them. And I go off and look, and I'm just reminded of how most organizations think about quality, which is meeting requirements, and it could be much more than that. But anyway, in The New Economics, Dr. Deming's book, first edition, came out in 1993. In there in the first chapter, he says, let me pull it up, and I wanna read it exactly from the good doctor.   Near the end of chapter one of the New Economics, Dr. Deming, in bold text, our listeners will find a statement, “a look at some of the usual suggestions for improvement of quality.” And Dr. Deming says, "There's widespread interest in quality. Suppose that we were to conduct next Tuesday a national referendum with the question, are you in favor of improvement of quality? Yes or no? The results." predicted Dr. Deming "would show, I believe," and again, I'm quoting Deming, "an avalanche in favor of quality. Moreover, unfortunately, almost everybody has the answer on how to achieve it. Just read the letters to the editor, speeches, books. It seems so simple. Here are some of the answers offered, all insufficient, some even negative in results."   0:09:17.9 Bill Bellows: "Automation, new machinery, more computers, gadgets, hard work, best efforts, merit system, annual appraisal, make everybody accountable, MBO, management by objective as practiced, MBR, management by results." And I'll just pause. Dr. Deming, when he would read this list in a seminar, would also make reference to MBIR, management by imposition of results. All right, back to Dr. Deming. "Rank people, rank teams, rank divisions, rank salesmen, reward them at the top, punish them at the bottom. More SQC, statistical quality control, more inspection, establish an office of quality, appoint someone as VP in charge of quality, incentive pay, work standards," in parentheses, "quotas," comma, "time standards," end quote. "Zero defects, meet specifications, motivate people." And then in bold print, Dr. Deming adds, "What is wrong with these suggestions?" He says, "the fallacy of the suggestions listed above will be obvious from subsequent pages of the text," meaning The New Economics.   0:10:36.1 Bill Bellows: "Every one of them ducks the responsibility of management," Andrew. "A company that advertised that the future belongs to him that invest in it, and thereupon proceeded to invest heavily," 40 million, no, 40 billion, I'm sorry, that's ten to the ninth. "40 billion in new machinery and automation, results, trouble, overcapacity, high cost, low quality. It must be said in defense of the management that they obviously had faith in the future." And I asked some people that knew Dr. Deming far better than me. Once upon a time, I said, "So who was Dr. Deming talking about, the company that invested $40 billion?" He said, "Oh, that was General Motors." And I used to think when I was at Rocketdyne that you could not ask for a better competitor than one that would invest $40 billion to lose market share, right? Talk about self-inflicted gunshot wounds that they're gonna go off, invest heavily in technology gadgets. That's what Dr. Deming's calling 'em, gadgets.   0:11:55.2 Andrew Stotz: Gadgets.   0:11:55.8 Bill Bellows: Did you ever hear what Dr. Deming said about, he says, there's a couple of things he said. This is one of the things I heard him say live. He said, "Where's the data in the computer? Gone forever." And then he'd say, "the hardest thing in all the world to find..." You know what he said, Andrew, was the hardest thing in all the world to find?   0:12:24.0 Andrew Stotz: No, what was that?   0:12:27.3 Bill Bellows: "A piece of paper and a pencil." 'Cause his mindset was just put the data that you wanna plot on a piece of paper, as opposed to in the computer, gone forever. Now, I worked with a company as a consultant for three years. And one of the first things they had me work on, of course, was trying to learn about a problem that happened a few years earlier. A problem, meaning something that did not conform to requirements. And in the middle of working on that for about three months and working on that, and the issue was, let's learn about what happened a couple of years ago so it doesn't happen again. And what happened a few years ago was a very stringent set of requirements for this aerospace hardware, missed the requirement by 10%. It was close. It was close, but the customer would not buy it. And it was a multimillion dollar asset that they held onto 'cause they were hoping they can convince the customer to buy it. And the customer just said, "You keep it, you keep it." So the issue was, "Come over and help us understand what happened. We don't do that again."   0:13:54.1 Bill Bellows: Well, in the midst of that, the same product being produced a few months later, instead of missing the requirement by about 10%, missed the requirement by about 70%.   0:14:12.9 Andrew Stotz: Oh.   0:14:13.2 Bill Bellows: Oh, oh. It was a nightmare. And the company spent a whole lot of money chasing that. In the long run, it may have been a bad test. We never found exactly what it was. And when I caught up with them years later, they eventually went back into production. But the reason I bring that up is, after the incident, I was called over. It was a very intense time to go figure out what's going on, only to find out that the data was in a computer. So, the data was not being plotted real time. So after the incident, one of the things that happened within a few days of the incident was to go back and plot the data. So when I was in a meeting and they showed the data and I knew what they were saying was they had pulled it out of the computer. I thought, "Dr. Deming's not kidding. Where's the data, in the computer? Gone forever." So I wanted to...   0:15:23.8 Andrew Stotz: I had something I wanted to add to that, and that is I have a couple of great classic pictures in our family that were made 100 years, 120 years ago.   0:15:36.8 Bill Bellows: Oh wow. Lucky you.   0:15:39.9 Andrew Stotz: Great grandma, those old, really old pictures. And I was just showing them to my, to some of the ladies that take care of my mom and they just can't. And I said, "Now think about all the improvements that have been done in photography. What is the chance that one out of your 10,000 pictures on your iPhone that you've taken is going to survive 120 years like this picture?" And the answer is zero. There's zero chance.   0:16:14.4 Bill Bellows: That's right. Because even if you have kids, they don't want 4000 photos then... 4000...   0:16:25.0 Andrew Stotz: Nobody can deal with that.   0:16:26.4 Bill Bellows: No one could... You're absolutely right. They will not. Unless that photo is printed and turned into a keepsake. Gone forever.   0:16:38.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:16:39.0 Bill Bellows: Yeah. No, that's a good point. That's a very... And the fact that these photos lasted that long is pretty damn amazing.   0:16:47.2 Andrew Stotz: Well, there's a great book. I forgot the name of it, but I'll remember it. There's a great book about how slow this... The pace. It's called "Future Hype" is the name of it. It's all about the slow pace of innovation. And this is a great example. Going from no photo to a great photo 120 years ago was true innovation.   0:17:12.0 Bill Bellows: Oh, yeah. Yes.   0:17:13.8 Andrew Stotz: Just coming up with ways to do thousands of photos. And the author just basically crushes everything that you think is innovation. That there's millions of patents now that are coming out. We're much more innovative than we were in the past. And then his whole point is, "Yeah, and go and look at them, and what you see is that they've changed the color a little bit, they've changed this, they've changed that, and they're just doing modifications." So, every single area that you think there is innovation. And I think that's part of what Dr. Deming's talking about, about it's in the computer that doesn't. Tools and gadgets don't solve the problem.   0:17:56.1 Bill Bellows: No, it's... Well, they are tools. And as we've talked about in this series, in the first series, there are tools and techniques. Cell phones, computers, automobiles. These are tools. Techniques are how to use them. And tools, to borrow from Ackoff, are about efficiency, doing things well. But not to be confused with effectiveness, also from Ackoff, which is doing the right thing. And what I admire... I think what we both admire about Dr. Deming's work is the ability of the System of Profound Knowledge to provoke the question of whether or not something is... Doing something is worthwhile to do. And that has to do with not doing things faster, but stepping back and asking, "Why am I doing this in the first place?" Dr. Deming talked about. I think he used to say... He phrased it as, be, Dr. Deming saying, "Andrew, do you know how companies make toast?" And Andrew says, "No, Dr. Deming, how do companies make toast?" You ever hear that?   0:19:16.0 Andrew Stotz: No.   0:19:17.1 Bill Bellows: He says, "First, they burn it, then they scrape it." [laughter] And so what I see in organizations is the people who make the toast pass it off to the next person who does the inspection, and then upon the inspection, is sent to the toast scraper, then the toast scraper scrapes the toast and then sends it to somebody else, which could be a second toasting. [laughter] And then on to the next. And the person who makes the toast in the first place is none the wiser that X percent of the toast, they're just passing it on and so the technology is used to speed that up. And what's not happening is some type of feedback on adjusting the controls. It's just, it's... And this is what I saw when I worked in Connecticut, was immense toast scraping. Oh, it was just phenomenal. We had a machine making these plates for a heat exchanger for the Army's current main engine battle tank. A 1500 horsepower gas turbine engine. And half the volume, Andrew, of the tank is a heat exchanger to capture the exhaust heat to preheat the compressed air to improve the fuel economy.   0:20:52.4 Bill Bellows: Even when half the volume of the tank engine is a heat exchanger to capture every ounce of excess energy and convert it back to the efficiency of the engine. Even with that, the fuel economy of the Army's today main battle tank is measured in gallons per mile 'cause it drinks gasoline. Now, it's phenomenal performance. But they can't move too fast to outrun the tankers. So, these heat exchanger plates have, in the original design, I'm not sure what design is nowadays, had roughly 2 miles of welding in the heat exchanger. And the welding was what's known as resistance welding. And these very, very thin plates were welded together with a little dot of current to melt the metal to create a little bead, and then another one on, and they were overlapping melts, and that created a seam. And after these plates were welded together, you know, two together, each of them was put on to this under a bright light, a literally a Lazy Susan.   0:22:11.0 Bill Bellows: This thing had a 27 inch outer diameter and there'd be a bead around the outside and a bead around the inside. Two different diameters. And on a given plate one inspector would look under a magnifying glass to see, are there any gaps in the beads? And then flip it over and look at the other side, and then hand off to the next person to look at the same plate again.   0:22:37.1 Bill Bellows: So, every plate was 200% inspected. There were 10 machines making these plates. There was no traceability from the inspector. All the problems might have been coming from machine number one. There was no such awareness. And so, after the inspector, "I found a quarter of an inch where you... " "Okay. Then we send it to Andrew for a re-weld." There's no feedback and is that system any better today? I'm aware of systems today that are very similar to that. So, anyway, that's what Deming's talking about relative to the... Yeah. How do companies make toast? Well, the other thing I want to jump to, relative to this "Are you in favor of quality?" Which got it on my one is, I thought, is something really neat to include in this series that we're doing Misunderstanding Quality. But as I'm getting these prompts from ASQ on a regular basis, I was reminded of a few things that are near and dear within the world of the American Society of Quality. And one is what's known as Quality 4.0. Not, 1.0, Andrew, 4.0. 4.0.   0:24:00.1 Andrew Stotz: So, we're out of the crisis.   0:24:01.1 Bill Bellows: Oh, and so the phrase, Quality 4.0, this is today, right? And actually, the incentive, "Quality 4.0," this is actually five years old. So maybe they're on to Quality 5.0, Andrew. The phrase, "Quality 4.0," derived from the German industrialization program called Industry 4.0, is an evaluation of the role of quality in the increasing digital and automated world. One question surrounding Quality 4.0 is where increasing automation will leave quality professionals in the future. Technology, Andrew, has changed quality work and now offers useful statistical software that allows the Six Sigma quality movement to grow. Tons of data that allow quality professionals to act on quality issues in almost real time and new statistical methods. So, what I find is, "Quality 4.0" is artificial intelligence. It's the Internet of Things. It is technology. So if Deming was writing the, you know, the chapter on that we just mentioned earlier, the list of all the things on that list would be pretty much everything I see in "Quality 4.0." Right.   0:25:23.9 Bill Bellows: So, how far have we come in the professional world of quality? At least I am... I find there's a lot missing relative to what Dr. Deming was talking about 30 some years ago. So, that's what I wanted to put on the table is, you know, we're again not... None of us have said we're against tools and techniques. Whether it's chat GPT, artificial intelligence, those are fantastic. But if they're not guided with a System of Profound Knowledge, then you're going to improve uniformity in isolation.   0:26:09.8 Bill Bellows: And we've talked about that in this series and that is the difference between precision and not accuracy. It is making things uniform. Then you have to ask, again when I... What I challenge for those that are in the Six Sigma world is everything I've seen and I've been reading a lot about Six Sigma for the last 30 years. Everything I see about it when it comes to reducing variability, it is about reducing variability to shrink the distribution such that, what, Andrew? Such that we end up with acceptability 100% all. No red beads, all white beads. And then we get into... I went in preparation for a call today to the ASQ website to learn, just a reminder, refresher on Quality 4.0 and again, nothing wrong with advanced digital technologies, but what if we coupled that with a strong foundation that we're trying to offer people in the Deming ??? who are interested in what Dr. Deming's ideas bring to improve, to guide that technology. So anyway, that's, you know, Quality 4.0. Also, I'm on the ASQ website and their glossary section if anyone wants to go look there. If you're a member, you get free access to this. "Quality, a subjective term for which each person or sector has its own definition."   0:27:42.7 Bill Bellows: Okay. "In technical usage, quality can have two meanings. One, the characteristic of a product or service that bears on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. Two, a product or service free of deficiencies." Excuse me. "According to Joseph Juran, quality means fitness for use. According to Philip Crosby, it means conformance to requirements." And I don't see in here a reference to Dr. Deming and how he defined quality, Andrew. Huh? Interesting. What I enjoyed about being a member of the... In fact I'm still a member of the American Society for Quality. The reason I joined is I was excited by quality. Everything I was learning about Dr. Taguchi's work and then Dr. Deming's work and then began to wonder if the American Society for Quality was advancing and doc... So if anyone listening has access to the American Society for Quality and people that make decisions there, you might want to include Dr. Deming's definition of quality.   0:29:00.2 Bill Bellows: Where Dr. Deming would say a product or service possesses quality if it helps someone and enjoys a sustainable market. And what I find is unique about that is my interpretation, as Dr. Deming is saying a lecture I deliver, a podcast we present, that we are not the judge of the quality that our listeners, students are. The people downstream are the judge of that. So, it's not me handing off a part that meets requirements saying this is good. Even when Juran says fitness for use, what I would ask is fitness absolute or is fitness relative? And so that's... So anyway, I just thought it'd be fascinating to remind our listeners of the simplicity of Dr. Deming's message from The New Economics. You know, is everyone and anyone in favor of quality? Yes. And again, nothing wrong with tools and techniques, but what a Deming organization, a Blue Pen Company, a "We" organization. What they could do, guided by the Deming philosophy, with computers, where computers make sense, with AI, where AI makes sense, would seriously outpace what other companies are doing. It's interesting, but it's just not enough to compete with companies who will do that.   0:30:32.3 Bill Bellows: So, if nobody is following the Deming philosophy, then you can get by with Quality 4.0, doing AI and doing those things. But if you've got competitors and what Dr. Deming would say, Andrew, is be thankful for a good competitor, one who raises your game, right. And so, if you and I are playing tennis and you know, we're out there to become better tennis players, and as soon as I find out that you're out there so you can go brag to your mom about how you beat me last night, then I say, "Andrew, find somebody else to beat." But if you're interest and my interest is, you know, getting a lot of exercise and improving our game. That's a different story. So, that's what I just wanted to share with our ongoing listeners, is there's a lot to be gained by continuing to study the Deming philosophy. Add it to your repertoire, build a foundation guided by what The Deming Institute is doing and sponsoring podcasts like this, as well as DemingNEXT is, there's just a lot of opportunities for what Dr. Deming is offering. And I'm reminded of that on a regular basis that people are saying, "Boy, why didn't I learn about this a long time ago, what this can bring organizations?" So that's what I wanted to bring to the table today.   0:31:50.1 Andrew Stotz: That's wonderful. Well, Bill, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion and for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. You'll see DemingNEXT there and the like. If you want to keep in touch with Bill, just find him on LinkedIn and reach out to him because he is responsive. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I want to leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. I just never stop talking about this quote 'cause I love it. "People are entitled to joy in work."  

In this episode, Bill Bellows and Andrew Stotz discuss David Garvin's 8 Dimensions of Quality and how they apply in the Deming world. Bill references this article by Garvin: https://hbr.org/1987/11/competing-on-the-eight-dimensions-of-quality TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with Bill Bellows, who has spent 31 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunities. This is the Misunderstanding Quality series, episode two, The Eight Dimensions of Quality. Bill, take it away.   0:00:30.4 Bill Bellows: Welcome back, Andrew. Great to see you again. All right, episode two, we're moving right along. So in episode one, which the title I proposed, waiting to see what comes out, the title I proposed was, Quality, Back to the Start. And that was inspired by some lyrics from Coldplay. Anyway, but this is a, it's going back to my start in quality and last time I mentioned discovering Taguchi's work long before I discovered Dr. Deming. In fact, Gipsie Ranney, who is the first president of the Deming Institute, the nonprofit formed by Dr. Deming and his family just before he passed away, and Gipsie became the first president and was on the board when I was on the board for many years. And I spoke with her nearly every day, either driving to work or driving home. And once, she calls me up and she says, "Bill," that was her Tennessee accent, "Bill."   0:01:50.5 BB: She says, "It says on The Deming Institute webpage that you infused Dr. Taguchi's work into Dr. Deming's work," something like that, that I... Something like I infused or introduced or I brought Taguchi's work into Deming's work, and I said, "Yes." I said, "Yeah, that sounds familiar." She says, "Isn't it the other way around?" That I brought Deming's work into Taguchi's work. And I said, "No, Gipsie," I said, "It depends on your starting point. And my starting point was Dr. Taguchi." But I thought it was so cool. She says, "Bill don't you have it? Don't you... " She is like, "Isn't it the other way around?" I said, "No, to me, it was all things Taguchi, then I discovered Dr. Deming." But I was thinking earlier before the podcast, and I walked around putting together how, what I wanna talk about tonight. And I thought, when I discovered Taguchi's work, I looked at everything in terms of an application of Dr. Taguchi's ideas.   0:03:29.7 AS: And one question about Taguchi for those people that don't know him and understand a little bit about him, was he... If I think about where Dr. Deming got at the end of his life, it was about a whole system, the System of Profound Knowledge and a comprehensive way of looking at things. Was Taguchi similar in that way or was he focused in on a couple different areas where he really made his contribution?   0:04:03.9 BB: Narrower than Dr. Deming's work. I mean, if we look at... And thank you for that... If we look at Dr. Deming's work in terms of the System of Profound Knowledge, the elements of systems psychology, variation, theory of knowledge, Taguchi's work is a lot about variation and a lot about systems. And not systems in the sense of Russ Ackoff systems thinking, but variation in the sense of where's the variation coming from looking upstream, what are the causes of that variation that create variation in that product, in that service?   0:04:50.9 BB: And then coupled with that is that, how is that variation impacting elsewhere in the system? So here I am receiving sources of variation. So what I deliver it to you has variation because of what's upstream of me and Taguchi's looking at that coupled with how is that variation impacting you? So those are the systems side, the variation side. Now, is there anything in Deming, in Taguchi's work about psychology and what happens when you're labelling workers and performance appraisals and, no, not at all.   0:05:37.6 AS: Okay, got it.   0:05:38.4 BB: Is there anything in there about theory of knowledge, how do we know that what we know is so? No, but there's a depth of work in variation which compliments very much so what Dr. Deming was doing. So anyway, so no. And so I discovered Taguchi's work, and I mentioned that in the first episode. I discovered his work, became fascinated with it, started looking at his ideas in terms of managing variation to achieve incredible... I mean, improved uniformity to the extent that it's worthwhile to achieve. So we were not striving for the ultimate uniformity, it's just the idea that we can manage the uniformity. And if we... And we'll look at this in more detail later, but for our audience now, if you think of a distribution of the variation in the performance of a product or a service, and you think in terms of... It doesn't have to be a bell-shaped distribution, but you have a distribution and it has an average and it has variation.   0:06:50.4 BB: What Dr. Taguchi's work is about in terms of a very brief, succinct point here in episode two is how might we change the shape of that distribution? How might we make it narrower, if that's a worthwhile adventure? It may be worthwhile to make it wider, not just narrower, but in both cases, we're changing the shape of the distribution and changing the location. So Taguchi's work, Taguchi's Methods, driven by variation comes to me, variation impacts you is how do I change the shape and location of that distribution? So on a regular basis, as I became more fascinated with that, I started thinking about, well, how might I apply Taguchi's ideas to these things that I encountered every day? Well, prior to that before discovering Taguchi's work, when I was a facilitator in problem solving and decision making training, I did the same thing, Andrew.   0:07:52.4 BB: I started looking at, oh, is this a problem? Is this a decision? Is this a situation that needs to be appraised? And so prior to that, what I was thinking about is when I was just a heat transfer analyst working on my Ph.D., I didn't look at how the heat transfer stuff affected all these other aspects of my lives. I didn't think about it when I went into a supermarket, but there was something about the problem solving and decision making that just infatuated me. And I would look at, oh, is Andrew talking about a decision or is Andrew talking about a problem? So I started hearing things. And so when I went into Taguchi's work, it was the same thing. And then shifting into Deming's work, it's the same thing. And I've... There's nothing else that I've studied that I look at things through those lenses. Anyway, so in studying, getting exposed to Taguchi, I mentioned that I had some time away from work, I went out on medical for some reasons and went and bought a book, a bunch of books.   0:09:02.4 BB: And one of the books I bought by David Garvin had come out in 1987, is entitled "The Eight Dimensions of Quality." There's a Harvard Business Review article that I wanna reference in this episode, and I'll put a link to the article. It's a free link. And so when you hear people talk about a quality product or a quality service or quality healthcare. We think in terms of it's quality as things, it's either good quality or bad quality or high quality, or somebody calls it low quality, or we just say it's a quality product. But what does that mean? So what I find is very loosely, we think in terms of categories of quality, good, bad, high, low. What we'll look at in a future episode is what would happen if we thought about quality on a continuum, which I believe Taguchi's work really demonstrates vividly as well as Dr. Deming's work.   0:10:07.4 BB: But even to back up before we talk about the eight dimensions of quality, I wanted to give some background on the word quality. The word quality, and this comes from an article and I'll put a link to this article, I wrote it for the Lean Management Journal a number of years ago, the word quality has Latin roots, beginning as qualitas, T-A-S, coined by the Roman philosopher and statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero. He later became an adversary of this bad guy named Mark Antony. You've heard of him. Feared by Antony, this guy was feared by Antony because his power of speech led, you know what it led to, Andrew, his power of speech?   0:10:54.5 AS: What?   0:10:54.6 BB: His beheading.   0:10:55.8 AS: Oh my goodness.   0:10:56.5 BB: So for those of you with great powers of speech, watch out for your Mark Antony. But meanwhile, he introduced fellow Romans to the vocabulary of qualitas, quantitas, quantity, humanitas, humanities, essentia, which is, essence, he also is credited with an extensive list of expressions that translate into English today. Difference, infinity, science, morale. Cicero spoke of qualitas with his peers when focusing on the essential nature, character or property of an object. And this is kind of interesting. I mean, you can count how many apples do we have. And again, he came up with the term quantitas for quantity, but he is also talking about the essence of the apples. That's the quality word. And then 2000 years later when writing "The New Economics", Dr. Deming provided his definition and a little bit different.   0:12:05.3 BB: He says, "The problem anywhere is quality. What is quality?" Says the good doctor, "A product or service possesses quality if it helps somebody, it enjoys a good and sustainable market." And I said in the article, "As with Cicero, Deming saw quality as a property." And then some other background on quality before I talk about Garvin, "long after Cicero and well before Deming, quality as a property was a responsibility of guilds." Guilds. I mean, now we have writers guilds, we have actors guilds, and it's kind of cool that these guilds still exist and they are associations of artisans who control the practice of their craft, each with a revered trademark. So here in Los Angeles, we have writers guilds, actors guilds. They were organized as professional societies, just like unions.   0:13:00.2 BB: And these fraternities were developed, and within these fraternities they created standards for high quality. All right. So what is this quality management stuff from David Garvin? So this article was written 37 years ago and reviewing it for tonight's episode and I thought it fit in really, really well. I was reminded of... First time I read this article, 1989, I knew a lot about... Well, I knew, I was excited about Taguchi as I knew a lot about Taguchi, didn't know a lot about Dr. Deming. So I'm now reviewing it years later with a much deeper, broader Deming perspective than at that time. But I do believe, and I would encourage the listeners to get ahold of the article, look at it, if you wanna go into more depth, there's Garvin's book. And doing some research for tonight, I found out that he passed away in 2017, seven or so years ago.   0:14:04.6 BB: He was, I guess from, most of his career and education he was at the Harvard Business School, very well respected there. And so in the article it talks about, again, this, 1987, that's the era of Total Quality Management. That's the era in which Dr. Deming was attracting 2000 people to go to his seminars. 1987 is two years before Six Sigma Quality, two years before “The Machine That Changed The World.” And in the article, he says, "Part of the problem, of course, is that Japanese and European competition have intensified. Not many companies tried to make quality programs work even as they implemented them." This is back when quality was an era of quality circles. He says, "In my view, most of the principles about quality were narrow in scope. They were designed as purely defensive measures to preempt failures or eliminate defects, eliminate red beads."   0:15:10.3 BB: "What managers need now is an aggressive strategy to gain and hold markets with high quality," there we go again, "as a competitive linchpin." All right. So in the article, he has some interesting explanations of... Highlights. In the book is more depth. He talks about Joseph Juran, "Juran's Quality Handbook". Juran observed that quality could be understood in terms of avoidable and unavoidable costs. Dr. Deming talked about the economics. The New Economics, right? But Juran is looking at avoidable, unavailable costs resulting from defects in product failures. That's very traditional quality today.  The latter associated with prevention, inspection, sampling, sorting, quality control. And so this is what I found fascinating, is 37 years later, this is still the heavy sense of what quality is all about. Avoiding failure, avoiding defects.   0:16:18.3 BB: Then he talks about Total Quality Control coming from Armand Feigenbaum, who was a big name in the '80s. Again Dr. Deming's work kind of created this big quality movement but it wasn't just Dr. Deming people discovered, they discovered Philip Crosby in a Zero Defects advocacy, Feigenbaum, Juran, sometime later. Again, mid '80s, Dr. Taguchi's name started to be heard. All right. And then the reliability. All right. Now I wanna get into the... Oh, here's, this is good. "In 1961, the Martin Corporation, Martin Company was building Pershing missiles for the US Army. The design of the missile was sound, but Martin found that it could maintain high quality only through massive inspection programs."   0:17:13.0 BB: You know what Dr. Deming would say about inspection? It's after the fact. Sorting the good ones from the bad ones after the fact. No prevention there. But Martin found that it could only do it with inspection. And decided to offer... Again, this is 1961, and this is still the solution today, decided to offer workers incentives to lower the defect rate. And in December, 1961, delivered a Pershing missile to Cape Canaveral with zero discrepancies. Buoyed by this success, Martin's general manager in Florida accepted a challenge issued by the Army's missile command to deliver the first Pershing missile one month ahead of schedule. He went even further, he promised that the missile would be perfect. Perfect. You know what that means, Andrew?   0:18:12.3 AS: Tell us.   0:18:12.8 BB: All good, not bad.   0:18:14.9 AS: All good, not bad.   0:18:15.9 BB: He promised missile would be perfect with no hardware problems or document errors, and that all equipment would be fully operational 10 days after delivering. And so what was neat in going back to this is we still have this mindset that quality is about things being good, not bad. What is bad we call that scrap, we call that rework. That's alive and well today.   0:18:45.0 AS: The proclamations are interesting when you listen to what he's saying, when you're quoting that.   0:18:52.4 BB: Yeah, no, and I remember, 'cause again, I read this recently for the first time in 37 years and I'm going through it. And at the time I was thinking, "Wow, wow, wow, this is a really big deal. This is a really big deal." Now I look at it and say, "This is what we're still talking about today, 37 years later." The absence of defects is the essence of quality. All right. But so I would highly recommend the article. Now we get into what he proposes as eight critical dimensions of quality that can serve as a framework for strategic analysis. And I think even in a Deming environment, I think it's... I think what's really cool about this is it provides a broad view of quality that I think Deming's work fits in very well to, Dr. Taguchi's work fits in very well to, and I think covers a lot of what people call quality. So the first dimension he talks about is performance.   0:20:01.4 BB: And he says, "Of course, performance refers to a product's primary operating characteristics." He says, "For an automobile, performance would include traits like acceleration, handling, cruising speed. For a television, sound and picture clarity." He says "A power shovel in the excavation business that excavates 100 cubic yards per hour will outperform one that excavates 10 cubic yards per hour." So the capacity, that could be miles per gallon, carrying capacity, the resolution of the pixels, that's what he calls performance. Okay. Features is the second dimension of quality. Examples include free drinks on an airplane, but not if you're flying a number of airlines they charge you for those drinks, permanent press cycles on a washing machine, automatic tuners on a color television set. A number of people in our audience won't know what those are, bells and whistles. Features are bells and whistles.   0:21:17.2 BB: There was a time people would say the number of cup holders in your automobile, a feature could be intermittent wipers. So these are features. So again, I mean, so performance is kind of cool. What is the capacity, is it 100 horsepower, 200 horsepower, that's performance. Features, bells and whistles. Okay. Fine. Reliability, now we're talking. The dimension represents the probability of a product malfunctioning or failing within a specified period of time. So your car breaking down, are you gonna drive to work every day and one morning you're gonna go out and it's... That's a reliability issue. Okay. That's... When I think about reliability, that's a Taguchi thing, that's a Deming thing.  And looking at time between failures, okay, fine. Reliability comes down to... And if importance for the impact of downtime, if you're looking at engines not working and you're sitting at the gate, that's a reliability issue. The reliability is, it can be repaired, but it's gonna take some time, perhaps. Conformance. All right.   0:22:40.4 AS: Is number four, right?   0:22:42.2 BB: This is number four, a related dimension of quality is conformance or the degree to which a product's design and operating characteristics meet established standards. "This dimension owes to the importance of traditional approaches," it says, "to quality pioneers such as Juran." All products and services involve specifications of some sort. When new designs or models are developed, dimensions are set for parts or purity, these specifications are normally expressed as a target or a center. Now it's starting to sound a little bit like Dr. Taguchi's work, an ideal value, deviance from the center within a specified range. But this approach equates good quality with operating inside the tolerance band. There is little interest in whether the specifications have been met exactly. For the most part, dispersion within specifications is ignored. Ignored. That's balls and strikes, Andrew, balls and strikes.   0:23:51.2 BB: As long as the ball is somewhere in the strike zone, as long as the characteristic is somewhere within requirements, conformance, this gets into what I talk about in terms of the question number one of quality management. Has the requirement been met, the requirement for the performance, the dimension, is it within requirements? And there's only two answers, yes or no. That's conformance. I used to think that the American Society for Quality might be better known as the American Society for the Preservation of Conformance. I find there's a lot of conformance thinking. I'm reminded of, I'm a member of the American Society for Quality as I'm on the Deming Medal Committee, so I have to be a member of ASQ. So I get a daily or every other day newsletter with comments and conformance is a big part of the conversation. Good parts and bad parts, scrap and rework. All right.   0:25:02.3 BB: Conformance is number four. And it's not to say there isn't a place for the conformance, but conformance is then again different from what Dr. Taguchi is talking about. All right. Durability, the measure of a product life. Durability has both economic and technical dimensions. Durability is how long does it work before I throw it away? So reliability is about, I can repair it. Okay. And that's an inconvenience. Durability is like light bulbs. It runs and runs or a refrigerator and someone says, "Well, it's time for a new one." That's a durability issue. Okay. Durability is the amount of use you get before you haul it off to the junkyard. That's durability. Okay. Serviceability. And back in the '60s, now I'm dating myself, there would be commercials for... I don't know which television brand, but what they talked about is, and these would be commercials. Commercials on television as to "our TV is easy to repair." And I thought, is that a good thing?   [laughter]   0:26:22.4 AS: Is that a foreboding?   0:26:24.4 BB: Yeah. And so... But again, the last couple of days I had to fix the sprinkler system in the backyard. And here in California we have, everybody has a sprinkler system. In the East Coast, people have above ground sprinkler systems. Here, they're all below ground. You don't have to worry about the lines freezing, at least in Los Angeles. And so anyway, one of the valves broke and I thought I was gonna buy a new one and take some of the parts from the new one to put it into the old one. And that didn't quite work. And so meaning to say, serviceability on the design was awful. I couldn't service it.   0:27:11.5 BB: I had to replace the whole damn thing, which was a lot more work than I was expecting. Anyway, however they designed it, serviceability didn't seem to be a consideration in the... That's dimension number six. Again, not to say there's anything wrong with thinking about serviceability. In terms of... Yeah. Okay, I'll leave it with that. Okay, serviceability. Number seven, aesthetics. The final two dimensions of quality are the most subjective, aesthetics, how a product looks, feels, sounds, taste, or smells is clearly a matter of personal judgment. Nevertheless, there seem to be patterns, a rich and full flavor aroma.   0:28:01.0 BB: That's got nothing to do with Dr. Taguchi's work. I mean, you can go off and do market research, find out what is the most appealing flavor, the most appealing taste, the most appealing aroma. And this is what I used to tell students is, and once you understand that or that vivid color that attracts the customer, then you could use Dr. Taguchi's work for, how can I reliably, predictably recreate, week after week, day by day, car by car, that aroma, that flavor, but Taguchi's work is not gonna tell you what it is. And then the last dimension of quality, you ready, Andrew?   0:28:45.8 AS: Give it to me, Bill.   0:28:47.7 BB: Perceived quality. "Consumers do not always have complete information on a product's attributes and direct measure is maybe their only basis. A product's durability can seldom be observed." And so we talk about perceptions of quality. Again, this is 1987, he says, "For this reason, Honda, which makes cars in Marysville, Ohio, and Sony, which builds color TVs have been reluctant to publicize that their products..." Ready? "Are made in America." Because the perception in 1987 is we want them to be made in Japan. And then we could talk about the perception of Cadillac quality, the perception of Jaguar quality.   0:29:35.7 BB: My father's gas station back in the early '70s, it was a block away from the nearby hospital. So a lot of our customers were doctors and they came in in their Cadillacs and Mercedes. And it was just a lot of fun. It was pretty cool. And one doctor against all of his peers' recommendations bought a Jaguar XJ12, V12, 12 cylinders, and they told him again and again, they said, "It'll spend more time in the shop than you driving it." No, no, no, he had to have one, he had to have one. And sure enough, it spent most of the time in the shop, but I got to drive it now and then, which was pretty cool. But that's perceived quality.   0:30:27.5 BB: So I just wanted to, in this episode, throughout those eight dimensions of quality. Again, I encourage our listeners, viewers, I think to get a broader sense of quality before you just look at quality from Dr. Deming's perspective, quality from anyone else's. I think that Garvin has done a really good job covering eight bases, if I can use that term, of quality. And then what I think is neat is to look at which of these tie into Deming's work, which of these tie into Dr. Taguchi's work? And that's what I wanted to cover in this episode.   0:31:01.8 AS: Fantastic. Well, let's just review that for the listeners and the viewers out there, eight dimensions. The first one is performance, the second one is features, the third one is reliability, the fourth one is conformance, the fifth one is durability, the sixth one is serviceability, the seventh one is aesthetics, how it feels and all that, and then the eighth one is perceived quality. Woah, that was...   0:31:29.4 BB: All about... Yeah. And it is reputation. You either have a great reputation or not.   0:31:38.3 AS: All right. Well, Bill, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And if you wanna keep in touch with Bill, just find him on LinkedIn. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, "People are entitled to joy in work."

This is a conversation with Anshuman Tiwari - TIQS Professional. We discuss the following Quality management for startupsIs Quality Management an after thought?How innovation and quality management are interlinkedDo they intersect?Confusing innovation with artistic creativity?Quality professionals outlook to lifeBook recommendationsFollow Anshuman at https://www.linkedin.com/in/anshumanFollow Hemang Shah at https://www.linkedin.com/in/hemangJoin his FREE newsletter at https://www.innovationsportslife.com/

My Cause:  Guide leaders to be their best; one conversation at a time. Ask better questions. Drive a better culture. Commit to bold! My Why: The simple belief that great leaders have a growth mindset. They love to be challenged and gain perspective. I believe being in a peer group is the most effective path to accomplish this outcome.     Pedigree? Sure, I have done some cool things. All American college wrestler and captain of the team at the United States Naval Academy.  Former Officer of Marines and served on the Commanding General's staff as only a captain filling a colonel's billet.  Leadership is my passion.  One of the early innovators in the Recruitment Process Outsourcing business as well as HR Outsourcing. Quality Blackbelt actually trained in the very last class taught by Joseph Juran himself...yes...I'm umm...experienced. Oh, and I surf to stay in touch with my young soul! Proof statements? Established one of the first profitable RPO businesses in the world (became Sourceright bought by Randstad). Senior Executive at Accenture sold HR Outsourcing engagements with TCV over $1 Billion. Restructured marketing strategies and sales teams at Vistage International leading to strongest growth in history of the firm.   Contact LK: Website LinkedIn Twitter

I'm assuming most of you are familiar with the Pareto principle, or 80-20 rule. The Pareto principle states that for many results, approximately 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the origin or project. Romanian born American engineer Joseph Juran (1904-2008) developed the concept and named it after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto(1848-1923). Pareto had noticed that 80% of the wealth in Italy belonged to about 20% of the population. In this show & article, we'll focus on five areas that will help you use the Pareto principle more effectively in relation your business plan and life. Hopefully it will enhance the results of your plans and goals as you understand how the principle can work for you. Full article: https://GoalsForYourLife.com/blog/pareto-principle

As noted in podcast 16 of this series, A Primer on Lean, 80/20 analysis refers to the Pareto Principle and is used to determine the significant few items that drive outcomes. The 80/20 name arises from the fact that for many outcomes 80% of the results are produced by 20% of the inputs. For example, in many businesses 20% of the products sold account for 80% of the profit. This tool is used by the team to simplify the business, remove complexity and variance, and identify the best improvement opportunities.The Pareto Principle was developed in the 1897 by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto discovered a pattern of imbalance when analyzing the distribution of wealth and income in 19th century England. More importantly he found that this imbalance was consistent across different countries and different time periods. George Zipf in 1949 discovered that the pattern of imbalance extended beyond wealth and income distribution to a wide range of data sets. In 1951, Joseph Juran, who many consider the “father of quality management”, published his book “Juran's Quality Control Handbook” which utilized the Pareto Principle as one of its guiding principles.

Most of us work five days a week, but in four of those days—we're only creating 20% of what we do in the week; there's a single day buried in there when we create 80% of our output for that week. If you've studied business or economics, you should be well familiar with the power of the Pareto Principle, also known as the Pareto Principle. The Pareto principle is extremely helpful in bringing swift and easy clarity to complex situations and problems, especially when deciding where to focus effort and resources. Pareto's 80-20 theory applies particularly to time management at the workplace, in a business, organizational management events and certainly it helps with personal time management outside of work too. It got its name from the individual that came up with the concept. Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto was born in Italy in 1848. He would go on to become an important philosopher and economist. It is not entirely certain how he came up with the principle, but the legend has it that one day he noticed that 20% of the pea plants in his garden generated 80% of the healthy pea pods. This could have been a coincidence, but he thought that the concept is really interesting so he decided to explore this further. Sadly Pareto didn't live to see the general appreciation and wide adoption of his principle; he seems to not have been particularly effective at explaining and promoting the theory beyond academic circles, and it was left to other experts such as George Zipf and Joseph Juran to develop and refine Pareto's theories to make them usable and popular in business and management later towards the middle of the 20th century. Thus, he took more of a pragmatic approach and applied the rationale in different contexts to check its validity. He considered the notion of wealth and after in-depth research, he discovered that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by just 20% of the population. Furthermore, he looked into other industries and surprise, surprise: Pareto found that 80% of the production of many industries usually came from just 20% of the companies. Taking this into consideration he simply concluded the following golden rule: 80% of results will come from just 20% of the action. In other words, you can achieve more by doing less. How great is that!? The notion quickly began to become popular (especially during recent times) and it was widely recognized as the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule. While it can be argued that it's not always an exact ratio of 80/20, this imbalance between the efforts put in and the results obtained can be observed in many examples. Here are some of them: o 80% of outputs come from only 20% of the inputs. o 80% of all consequences come from only 20% of causes. o 80% of your results come from only 20% of your effort and time. o 80% of your company's profits come from only 20% of the products and customers. o 20% of the sales reps generate 80% of total sales. o 20% of customers account for 80% of total profits. o 20% of the most reported software bugs cause 80% of software crashes. o 20% of patients account for 80% of healthcare spending.

In this episode LK, who is a global leader and expert in leadership, helps break down best practices and challenges facing todays leaders. He brings not only his background as a NCAA All American, Naval Academy Graduate and Global career expertise to this episode, but also the human side of what the new normal will require for success. More about LarryGuide leaders to be their best; one conversation at a time. Ask better questions. Drive a better culture. Commit to bold!My Why: The simple belief that great leaders have a growth mindset. They love to be challenged and gain perspective. I believe being in a peer group is the most effective path to accomplish this outcome.Pedigree? Sure, I have done some cool things. One of the early innovators in the Recruitment Process Outsourcing business as well as HR Outsourcing. Quality Blackbelt actually trained in the very last class taught by Joseph Juran himself...yes...I'm umm...experienced. Oh, and I snowboard to stay in touch with my young soul!Proof statements? Established one of the first profitable RPO businesses in the world (became Sourceright bought by Randstad). Partner at Accenture sold HR Outsourcing engagements with TCV over $1 Billion. (yes with a B) Restructured marketing strategy and sales team.Specialties:Executive Coaching. Recruitment Process Outsourcing. Leadership Effectiveness. Talent Strategy. Change Management. Human Resources Outsourcing. Manage Service Provider. Process re-engineering. Sales Leader. Team builder.

“We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal.” - Robert Brault, quoted by Gary Keller in The One Thing   In 1997, when Steve Jobs came back to a struggling Apple (after having been ousted from the company he formed) …   …he took Apple’s product suite from 350 products down to 10 in a period of two years.   I’m sure those 350 products all had a reason for existence, and likely even some pretty talented people attached to them.   But 350 products confused the market, scattered resources and diffused their collective potential.   We all know how that process of simplification turned out.   When it comes to Finding Purpose in your life, a similar simplification process must take place.   Your life often gets more complicated than it needs to be. (I’m speaking as a notorious, but rapidly rehabilitating, over-complicator.)   If you truly want to live an extraordinary life of Purpose…   …the trivial many, must give way to the vital few.   -DQ   *The last line inspired by Joseph Juran in The One Thing

"Profiles in Supply Chain Leadership: Norman Bodek (Part 3)" Supply Chain Now Radio, Episode 243 This episode concludes the series with Norman Bodek. Norman is President of PCS Inc. In 1979, after working for 18 years with Data Processing companies, Norm Bodek started Productivity Inc. - Press by publishing a newsletter called PRODUCTIVITY. At the time, he said he knew virtually nothing about the subject and had spent very little time in manufacturing facilities. But, he quickly became fascinated with the subject and went to Japan to discover the processes that was making Japan the world leaders in quality improvement and productivity growth. Even though on his first visit to Japan he didn't know a single person or speak Japanese, he has since, in the last 31 years, gone to Japan 80 times, visited more than 250 plants and published more than 100 Japanese management books in English, and over 150 other management books. As a fortune cookie once told him, "You have the talent to discover the talent in others." Mr. Bodek said his claim to fame is that he found amazing tools, techniques and new thoughts that have revolutionized the world of manufacturing. He has met Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Dr. Joseph Juran, Phil Crosby, Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, Dr. Joji Akao, Mr. Taiichi Ohno, Dr. Shigeo Shingo and many other great manufacturing masters and published many of their books in English. Each person he met gave him a new perspective on continuous improvement. Mr. Bodek has lead over 25 study missions to Japan and was one of the first to find and publish books, training materials and run conferences and seminars on TPS, SMED, CEDAC, quality control circles, 5 S, visual factory, TPM, VSM, Kaizen Blitz, cell design, poka-yoke, lean accounting, Andon, Hoshin Kanri, Kanban, and Quick and Easy Kaizen. Mr. Bodek, who was once called "Mr. Productivity" by Industry Week Magazine, and "Mr. Lean" by Quality Progress Magazine, said his most powerful discovery was the way Toyota and other Japanese companies opened the infinite creative potential often lying dormant inside every single worker. Most recently, he worked with Gulfstream Corporation, a private jet company, where 1000 people that went from 16-implemented ideas in February 2005 to close to 40,000 in 2011, and resulting each year in annually savings of over $2 million. Mr. Bodek founded the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence at Utah State University with Dr. Vern Buehler and is one of the few to be personally awarded the Shingo Prize. He also was inducted into Industry Week's Hall of Fame. Learn more about Bodek’s firm, PSC Inc, here: https://www.pcspress.com/ Upcoming Events & Resources Mentioned in this Episode Subscribe to Supply Chain Now Radio: https://supplychainnowradio.com/subscribe/ SCNR to Broadcast Live at CSCMP Atlanta Roundtable Event: https://tinyurl.com/y43lywrd Reverse Logistics Association Conference & Expo: https://rla.org/event/80 SCNR to Broadcast Live at MODEX 2020: https://www.modexshow.com/ SCNR to Broadcast Live at AME Atlanta 2020 Lean Summit: https://www.ame.org/ame-atlanta-2020-lean-summit 2020 Atlanta Supply Chain Awards: https://www.atlantasupplychainawards.com/ SCNR on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/scnr-youtube The Latest Issue of the Supply Chain Pulse: https://conta.cc/2YTuebX Check Out News From Our Sponsors The Effective Syndicate: https://www.theeffectivesyndicate.com/blog Spend Management Experts: https://spendmanagementexperts.com/ APICS Atlanta: https://apicsatlanta.org TalentStream: https://talentstreamstaffing.com/ Verusen: https://www.verusen.com/ Georgia Manufacturing Alliance: https://www.georgiamanufacturingalliance.com/ ProPurchaser.com: https://tinyurl.com/y6l2kh7g Supply Chain Real Estate: https://supplychainrealestate.com/ Vector Global Logistics: http://vectorgl.com/ This episode was hosted by Chris Barnes. For more information, please visit our dedicated show page at: www.supplychainnowradio.com/episode-243

"Profiles in Supply Chain Leadership: Norman Bodek (Part 2)" Supply Chain Now Radio, Episode 239 This episode features Norman Bodek. Norman Bodek is President of PCS Inc. In 1979, after working for 18 years with Data Processing companies, Norm Bodek started Productivity Inc. - Press by publishing a newsletter called PRODUCTIVITY. At the time, he said he knew virtually nothing about the subject and had spent very little time in manufacturing facilities. But, he quickly became fascinated with the subject and went to Japan to discover the processes that was making Japan the world leaders in quality improvement and productivity growth. Even though on his first visit to Japan he didn't know a single person or speak Japanese, he has since, in the last 31 years, gone to Japan 80 times, visited more than 250 plants and published more than 100 Japanese management books in English, and over 150 other management books. As a fortune cookie once told him, "You have the talent to discover the talent in others." Mr. Bodek said his claim to fame is that he found amazing tools, techniques and new thoughts that have revolutionized the world of manufacturing. He has met Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Dr. Joseph Juran, Phil Crosby, Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, Dr. Joji Akao, Mr. Taiichi Ohno, Dr. Shigeo Shingo and many other great manufacturing masters and published many of their books in English. Each person he met gave him a new perspective on continuous improvement. Mr. Bodek has lead over 25 study missions to Japan and was one of the first to find and publish books, training materials and run conferences and seminars on TPS, SMED, CEDAC, quality control circles, 5 S, visual factory, TPM, VSM, Kaizen Blitz, cell design, poka-yoke, lean accounting, Andon, Hoshin Kanri, Kanban, and Quick and Easy Kaizen. Mr. Bodek, who was once called "Mr. Productivity" by Industry Week Magazine, and "Mr. Lean" by Quality Progress Magazine, said his most powerful discovery was the way Toyota and other Japanese companies opened the infinite creative potential often lying dormant inside every single worker. Most recently, he worked with Gulfstream Corporation, a private jet company, where 1000 people that went from 16-implemented ideas in February 2005 to close to 40,000 in 2011, and resulting each year in annually savings of over $2 million. Mr. Bodek founded the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence at Utah State University with Dr. Vern Buehler and is one of the few to be personally awarded the Shingo Prize. Learn more about Bodek’s firm, PSC Inc, here: https://www.pcspress.com/ Upcoming Events & Resources Mentioned in this Episode Subscribe to Supply Chain Now Radio: https://supplychainnowradio.com/subscribe/ SCNR to Broadcast Live at CSCMP Atlanta Roundtable Event: https://tinyurl.com/y43lywrd Reverse Logistics Association Conference & Expo: https://rla.org/event/80 SCNR to Broadcast Live at MODEX 2020: https://www.modexshow.com/ SCNR to Broadcast Live at AME Atlanta 2020 Lean Summit: https://www.ame.org/ame-atlanta-2020-lean-summit 2020 Atlanta Supply Chain Awards: https://www.atlantasupplychainawards.com/ SCNR on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/scnr-youtube The Latest Issue of the Supply Chain Pulse: https://conta.cc/2YTuebX Check Out News From Our Sponsors The Effective Syndicate: https://www.theeffectivesyndicate.com/blog Spend Management Experts: https://spendmanagementexperts.com/ APICS Atlanta: https://apicsatlanta.org TalentStream: https://talentstreamstaffing.com/ Verusen: https://www.verusen.com/ Georgia Manufacturing Alliance: https://www.georgiamanufacturingalliance.com/ ProPurchaser.com: https://tinyurl.com/y6l2kh7g Supply Chain Real Estate: https://supplychainrealestate.com/ Vector Global Logistics: http://vectorgl.com/ This episode was hosted by Chris Barnes. For more information, please visit our dedicated show page at: www.supplychainnowradio.com/episode-239

"Profiles in Supply Chain Leadership: Norman Bodek (Part 1)" Supply Chain Now Radio, Episode 237 This episode features Norman Bodek. Norman is President of PCS Inc. In 1979, after working for 18 years with Data Processing companies, Norm Bodek started Productivity Inc. - Press by publishing a newsletter called PRODUCTIVITY. At the time, he said he knew virtually nothing about the subject and had spent very little time in manufacturing facilities. But, he quickly became fascinated with the subject and went to Japan to discover the processes that was making Japan the world leaders in quality improvement and productivity growth. Even though on his first visit to Japan he didn't know a single person or speak Japanese, he has since, in the last 31 years, gone to Japan 80 times, visited more than 250 plants and published more than 100 Japanese management books in English, and over 150 other management books. As a fortune cookie once told him, "You have the talent to discover the talent in others." Mr. Bodek said his claim to fame is that he found amazing tools, techniques and new thoughts that have revolutionized the world of manufacturing. He has met Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Dr. Joseph Juran, Phil Crosby, Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, Dr. Joji Akao, Mr. Taiichi Ohno, Dr. Shigeo Shingo and many other great manufacturing masters and published many of their books in English. Each person he met gave him a new perspective on continuous improvement. Mr. Bodek has lead over 25 study missions to Japan and was one of the first to find and publish books, training materials and run conferences and seminars on TPS, SMED, CEDAC, quality control circles, 5 S, visual factory, TPM, VSM, Kaizen Blitz, cell design, poka-yoke, lean accounting, Andon, Hoshin Kanri, Kanban, and Quick and Easy Kaizen. Mr. Bodek, who was once called "Mr. Productivity" by Industry Week Magazine, and "Mr. Lean" by Quality Progress Magazine, said his most powerful discovery was the way Toyota and other Japanese companies opened the infinite creative potential often lying dormant inside every single worker. Most recently, he worked with Gulfstream Corporation, a private jet company, where 1000 people that went from 16-implemented ideas in February 2005 to close to 40,000 in 2011, and resulting each year in annually savings of over $2 million. Mr. Bodek founded the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence at Utah State University with Dr. Vern Buehler and is one of the few to be personally awarded the Shingo Prize. Learn more about Bodek’s firm, PSC Inc, here: https://www.pcspress.com/ Upcoming Events & Resources Mentioned in this Episode: SCNR to Broadcast Live at CSCMP Atlanta Roundtable Event: https://tinyurl.com/y43lywrd Reverse Logistics Association Conference & Expo: https://rla.org/event/80 SCNR to Broadcast Live at MODEX 2020: https://www.modexshow.com/ SCNR to Broadcast Live at AME Atlanta 2020 Lean Summit: https://www.ame.org/ame-atlanta-2020-lean-summit 2020 Atlanta Supply Chain Awards: https://www.atlantasupplychainawards.com/ SCNR on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/scnr-youtube The Latest Issue of the Supply Chain Pulse: https://conta.cc/2rLkO5Y Check Out News From Our Sponsors: The Effective Syndicate: https://www.theeffectivesyndicate.com/blog Spend Management Experts: https://spendmanagementexperts.com/ APICS Atlanta: https://apicsatlanta.org TalentStream: https://talentstreamstaffing.com/ Verusen: https://www.verusen.com/ Georgia Manufacturing Alliance: https://www.georgiamanufacturingalliance.com/ ProPurchaser.com: https://tinyurl.com/y6l2kh7g Supply Chain Real Estate: https://supplychainrealestate.com/ Vector Global Logistics: http://vectorgl.com/ This episode is hosted by Chris Barnes. For more information, please visit our dedicated show page at: www.supplychainnowradio.com/episode-237

Ep 002 - What is the ABC Formula? _ It’s the year 1896, and Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto publishes his first work, Cours d’Economie Politique. In it he shows that approximately 80% of Italy’s land is owned by 20% of the population. Fast forward to 1941, American engineer and management consultant, Joseph Juran discovers the work of Pareto and begins to apply this principle to his consulting practice. He notices this very principle could be applied to quality issues, meaning: 80% of a problem is caused by 20% of the causes. 20% of a team’s members are going to make up 80% of a project’s success and 20% of customers will create 80% of the profits. In other words 20% of inputs are responsible for 80% of outputs. So just like Joseph Juran took this 80/20 principle and applied it to management; we too can take this principle and apply it to growing your ecommerce brand. It starts by focusing on the 20% that drive the 80%, the 3 most important growth levers of your business. But before I reveal these 3 growth levers to you, let’s apply this 80/20 principle on what 20% of challenges, stifle 80% of your growth... _ This podcast is produced and sponsored by SparkPPC | Ecommerce Marketing Consulting. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ecommerce-marketer/message

El tema de hoy está centrado en ser mejores formadores digitales a través de la productividad. Veremos cómo podemos aplicar una regla que nos permita focalizarnos en lo que más beneficio nos retorna. Beneficio no solamente económico. Si no, también, en distribuir eficientemente la energía que invertimos en captar clientes, desarrollar contenidos o resolver dudas de nuestros alumnos. Además, veremos unas pautas para crear, de manera eficiente, los productos formativos que les ofrezcamos a nuestros alumnos virtuales. Y como no hay que reinventar la rueda para conseguirlo, pero si hay que mirar por el retrovisor de la historia, vamos a empezar por el comienzo, al más puro estilo “Érase una vez”. Vilfredo Pareto, la riqueza italiana, Joseph Juran, Japón y el 80 / 20 Pues bién, érase una vez un reconocido ingeniero, economista y sociólogo italiano nacido en Francia. Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto, el nombre de nuestro protagonista, tuvo una trayectoria profesional vinculada con la industrialización, la economía y con la docencia durante toda su vida. A comienzos del siglo XX analizó que en la sociedad había dos grupos: Los muchos de poco Los pocos de mucho Pareto realizó un estudio sobre la propiedad de la tierra en Italia y descubrió que: El 20% de los propietarios poseían el 80% de las tierras El 20% de los terrenos pertenecían al 80% de los propietarios Y no quedó en un dato simbólico sobre su estudio, si no que siguió aplicándolo a otro ámbito totalmente diferente, la productividad agrícola de su jardín. Descubriendo que el 80% de los guisantes eran producidos por el 20% de las vainas. Tal vez estoy podría haber quedado en una anécdota si años más tarde, Joseph Juran, un ingeniero estadounidense no lo hubiera introducido y aplicado en el desarrollo empresarial. Nuestro nuevo protagonista en esta historia sobre la productividad, viajó a Japón para ayudar a empresas a reducir el número de productos defectuosos en las cadenas de fabricación. Previamente y aplicando el principio de Pareto descubrió que: El 80% de los productos defectuosos se deben únicamente al 20% de las causas que lo originan. Si nos enfocamos en buscar ese 20% de las causas, el problema será resuelto en dicha proporción. Consiguiendo un resultado en gran medida. Así que, empresas como Toyota, se convirtieron en gigantes internacionales gracias a mejorar la calidad de su producción. A partir de ese momento, viendo su gran potencial, este principio sentó las bases para: Decidir qué valores y objetivos nos importan más. Definir qué podemos hacer que tenga la máxima repercusión o suponga el mínimo esfuerzo para lograr lo que nos importe más. ¿Cómo podemos aplicar el principio de Pareto de manera común? Si lo vemos desde una perspectiva general en nuestras vidas, realicémonos un par de preguntas muy sencillas. ¿Qué 20% de nuestra vida nos da el 80% de nuestras satisfacciones? ¿Qué 20% de nuestra vida produce el 80% de nuestros problemas? Tendríamos que incluir aspectos sobre nuestras relaciones sociales, hábitos cotidianos o, inclusive, de nuestra alimentación para poder plantearnos soluciones que nos ayuden a lograr nuestras metas. Así que tengamos en mente, también, que el 20% de nuestro tiempo produce el 80% de los resultados. ¿Cómo aplicar el principio de Pareto a nuestros negocios? Para resolver este planteamiento, cambiemos la perspectiva y establezcamos qué: El 80% de nuestras ganancias provienen del 20% de los clientes. El 80% de nuestras ventas provienen de 20% de los productos y/o servicios que les ofrecemos. Por lo que podemos plantearnos quedar con únicamente los clientes y productos o servicios que nos den los mejores resultados, deshagamonos del resto y logremos así obtener un 80% de nuestro tiempo para dedicarlo a mejorar lo que funciona realmente. Este principio no es perfecto en el total de los casos en lo que podríamos aplicarlo,

On va voir dans cet épisode comment être bien plus productif. Le titre indique quatre fois, cela peut être deux fois ou dix fois plus productif selon l’action entreprise et selon votre situation. Mais si vous comprenez et appliquez le principe que l’on va découvrir, votre productivité augmentera exponentiellement. Ecouter « Devenir 4X Plus Productif » Retranscription de l’épisode Tout d’abord, pourquoi vouloir augmenter sa productivité? Je reçois régulièrement des emails de personnes qui notent qu’elles aimeraient commencer à méditer, mais elles n’arrivent pas à trouver le temps de mettre cette habitude en place. Nous avons tous le même nombre d’heures dans une journée, pourtant certaines personnes semblent en faire beaucoup plus que d’autres: avoir une famille, une entreprise, faire du sport, méditer, etc. Alors que d’autres personnes luttent simplement pour garder la tête hors de l’eau et n’arrivent pas à mettre en place de nouvelles activités. Comment faire pour être plus productif? Pour se libérer du temps pour pouvoir faire ce que l’on aime? Un moyen pour faire cela est d’appliquer la loi de Pareto qui dit que 20% de ce que l’on fait amène 80% de nos résultats. Vilfredo Pareto, un économiste italien de la fin du 19e a remarqué que 80% des terres en Italie étaient possédées par 20% des Italiens. En regardant de plus près, il a observé que cette distribution inégale se retrouvait dans tous les domaines de la société. Puis dans les années 30, Joseph Juran, un ingénieur travaillant pour General Motors (principal constructeur de voiture) remarqua que la loi 20/80 s’appliquait aussi à de nombreux autres domaines. Il vit par exemple qu’une poignée d’erreurs dans le montage d’une voiture causait le plus de dégât. Au lieu de chercher à résoudre toutes les possibles fautes d’assemblages, ce qui coutait cher et prenait du temps, Juran convainquit les responsables de GM d’adresser en priorité ces 4 ou 5 erreurs causant le plus de problèmes. Cela a permis à GM d’avoir beaucoup moins de problèmes avec le produit final, la voiture, et cela à moindre coût. Comment appliquer la loi Pareto à votre vie? Cela commence par comprendre que 20% de ce que vous faites amène 80% des résultats. À noter que 20/80 est une estimation. Parfois c’est 5% de nos actions qui amènent 90% de nos résultats. Cela est aussi vrai pour les problèmes. Une personne peut travailler avec 10 collègues, mais 1 collègue va lui causer la majorité de son stress. C’est la loi du résultat disproportionné. Passer 2 heures à travailler sur ce qui est important générera 80% de résultats alors que travailler 8 heures sur ce qui est secondaire ne générera que 20% de résultat. L’important va être d’identifier ce qui a le plus grand potentiel de résultat et de se concentrer dessus. Mais nous sommes trop peu nombreux à le faire. Pourquoi? Car ces 20% d’activité sont souvent les plus difficiles ou inconfortables à entreprendre. On va préférer passer notre temps à faire ce qui apporte le moins de résultats, mais qui est facile à faire. Je peux vous donner mon exemple, car pendant plusieurs années, j’étais à mes dépens, un expert dans la non-productivité! Je passais mon temps à faire des activités qui généraient peu de résultats. Je passais le plus gros de mon à générer peu de résultats, au lieu de me concentrer sur les actions qui pouvaient m’amener de bien plus importants changements. Concrètement? Lorsque je me suis installé en tant que chiropraticien en avril 2000, mon objectif comme tout jeune praticien de santé était de me faire connaître et de développer ma patientèle. J’ai alors décidé de travailler sur la création d’un pamphlet papier expliquant mon activité. Je passais des heures à travailler sur la mise en page, sur les illustrations, sur le choix des couleurs…. Je me souciais de détails que j’étais le seul à remarquer. Dans une semaine je pouvais passer 15 heures à travailler sur de tels détails. Et bien entendu, les résultats en terme de nouveaux patients par rapport à ...

Not everyone master time management techniques. Everyone seems to have millions of things to do and wants to get those things done but the question is how? Only mastering time management techniques can help out with that.  In this interview with Jay Papasan, a New York Times bestselling author, talks about The One Thing and how we can stay more focused and leverage our time just by doing that One Thing. Key Takeaways What we need is a mechanism to help us filter out a lot of the noise so we can focus on the few things, often the one thing that really matters the most. Therefore, mastering time management techniques is so important. The world is advanced a little faster than we can adapt to it. Extreme Pareto – knowing what your number one priority is key to the time management techniques Vilfredo Pareto observed that 80% of the wealth in Italy was held by 20% of the people. There's a minority of what we do that gets us the majority of what we want. We should put in a sense of priority in our to-do list. By taking real control over your priority, you end up doing a lot of the other important stuff just by default. But when you live these priorities, all the other stuff, either goes away completely or it just kind of gets done without you having to give it a lot of energy. Starting with the most important thing releases stress, and then you can implement other time management techniques easily. Most people are really successful in spite of most what they do, learning time management techniques is the key. We're all a little resistant to change but the reality is everybody could be a lot more efficient. Launch your days with priority, this is one of the most important time management techniques. It's not sustainable to be that focused all that time. When you wake up in the morning, ask yourself this focusing question. What's the one thing I can do, just by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary? Go to your list and figure out your 1, your 2, you 3, and start there. Best time management techniques recommend prioritizing and then listing tasks. Just a small dose of extreme focus has magnificent benefits for the rest of your day,  best time management techniques emphasize on focus. When you ask yourself a question like the focusing question, it really forces you to narrow it down to one thing. Most people know what their priority is but because they don't stop long enough to ask the question, the just walk around feeling guilty for not addressing it. Once you know your priorities, make an appointment with yourself to do that every day. The most successful people in the world made their One Thing a ritual. Making that appointment in time triples your effectiveness. Effective time management techniques helps you do this. The biggest challenge is to keep the willingness and battling distractions. If it's truly your passion, it's worth making this one investment so that you can do it right. Do whatever it takes to learn time management techniques 6-10 IQ points are lost when you’re multitasking, use some time management techniques to avoid that. The things that actually matter the most are our relationships, the people that we love most. The better you are at mastering time management techniques, the best will be your relationships. Give your work that much respect as well, knowing few time management techniques will really work. It’s a myth that women are better multitaskers than men. Pomodoro Method - the idea that we need to break our focus every 20-25 minutes and then we get a fresh spurt of focus We hit our flow when we’re working at the edge of our abilities, master some time management techniques. Use timers for repetitive tasks, use some effective time management techniques to teach yourself. Big blocks of time for the most important work, little blocks of time for small tasks like email.Make a commitment to do something that you should be doing tomorrow or today, for that you really need to master some time management techniques. Why is learning time management techniques important? Kamala Chambers: This show is going to be so amazing for you because we're going to talk about how to get more focused, how to save time using amazing time management techniques, and how to get more done. Oh my god. Can’t we all use that? Luis Congdon: He is New York Times bestselling author. He's been on over a 175 media appearances, ranging from all the news stations you can imagine, large publications, and now we have him here to talk to all of us about how we can save time through time management techniques and how we can actually utilize time in a much richer and stronger way. This interview for you is really special because Jay just really shows up and is full of heart, passion, and love. So we're excited to bring you Jay Papasan to learn more about time management techniques. Kamala Chambers: It's so awesome to have you here Jay Papasan! Welcome! Are you ready to launch? Jay Papasan: I am so ready to go. Thanks for having me. Luis Congdon: So Jay, you wrote this book. People are loving it. I was just checking it out in amazon and it's got nearly 15,000 reviews for the audiobook. It's nuts! People are raving about this and for me, it seems very appropriate that people are crazy about this book right now because The One Thing is urging us to slow down. Now, without giving away the book and asking the question giving away, from me, what I'm curious about, what is the one thing? Why do you think people love this book so much? Is it about the time management techniques? Jay Papasan: I think that Gary and I were fortunate enough to put this out at a time when people needed it. I think that we look up and everything is accelerating so fast. I think about your audience, people who are entrepreneurs and self-starters, who are looking into improve their lives. The amount of information that's available to us, the opportunities and in some ways, I'm getting to that place where not only I have kids but older parents, the obligations that we face. I think there's a lot of overwhelm going on. What we need is a mechanism to help us filter out a lot of the noise so we can focus on the one thing that really matters the most. I think that's why it’s kind of resonating. It's just that we got the right time in our lives, this moment in history when the world is advanced a little faster than we can adapt to it. Mastering time management techniques Luis Congdon: One of the things that I really got from your book is how important it is for me to identify the key and essential actions, behaviors, time management techniques, whatever it might be for me to accomplish my goal and for me to try to really identify that you've been referring it to as extreme Pareto. So let's talk about Pareto's Law briefly. Tim Ferris is a big fan of Pareto's Law. What is Pareto's Law and why do you advocate in extreme version of it? Jay Papasan: It's kind of the ultimate successful. It would be like in the world of physics, we have gravity. In the world of accomplishment, we have the 80/20. It comes from an Italian economist in the 18th century. Vilfredo Pareto observed that 80% of the wealth in Italy was held by 20% of the people and that little observation by obscure economist lay dormant until a guy named Joseph Juran, heard about it while studying executive compensation and he was a big quality control guy and he said, "Oh wait. When I look at the assembly lines, 80% of the defects come from 20% of the flaws." He admittedly knew that there was something bigger there. So it was actually on his manual on quality control that it got popularized. In the mid-80s, the 80/20 Principle Book was written. And that's where Gary Keller was exposed to it, my co-author. The minority of what we do that gets us the majority of what we want. – Jay Papasan The 80 and the 20, I think those numbers confuse people because they don't always show up. They do a lot but there's a minority of what we do. So what we want people to do is look at that to-do list and instead of just marching through it like we often do which is to cross off the stuff we can do the fastest or the easiest, most of us are working to make it shorter, to put it in the some sense of priority. If I can only get one thing done today, what's that thing? And that becomes your number one perhaps learning some time management techniques. And if I can only get two things done today, what's that number two? And most people go from the list like it goes as long as a page. 20 or 30 things down to 4 or 5, really essential ones and they know what their number one is. That's their 20% and we just want to say what's the 20% of that and the 20% of that until they know exactly what their number one priority is. That's extreme Pareto. Kamala Chambers: This is so brilliant because one thing whenever we ask thriving launchers what's the one thing they're suffering from most is lacking time management techniques, it's overwhelm. Entrepreneurs, coaches, authors, speakers, and everybody has got a million things to do and there's a million things to grow your business and to make it better and all of it. This is the same thing that I apply is how I get a lot done. What are the top three things that I absolutely need to do today and focus on those. So that's fantastic. I'd love to hear more from you about people that are full of passion and full of desire and they have all these different ideas? What would you really say to that group of people particularly those who seek time management techniques? Jay Papasan: Well, the first thing is when we call the book, The One Thing, I remembered going to the book expo in New York and all the New York publishers were just laughing like there's never just one thing when we all have too many things on our plate. So, one of the metaphors in the book is this idea of a domino run.Take real control over priority - one of important time management techniques I'm going to get exactly to your answer here. The idea is I want to acknowledge that there's a lot of stuff on the list and as entrepreneurs and self-starters, we feel we do have to get to them all but when you line them up properly, just like you've probably done with dominoes at home, one thing, I actually knock over a bunch of stuff and that's the secret truth behind the idea of this Pareto's principle, in our case, the one thing. When people make a stand and say, "You know what, for my new business, my number one thing is I'm going to be working on cold media. Cold media to drive traffic to my website and I'm going to give that all of my focus. That's where I'm going to start my days. That's going to be like all of my energy." When people actually live that commitment, there's a halo effect. By taking real control over that priority, you end up doing a lot of the other important stuff just by default. It's just amazing having you put the conversation from all the stuff that they have to do to this one essential thing that they must do. All the stuff still gets done. So I think, that's the first message people need to hear because they look at that list, they get it intellectually but they can't get pass the fact that numbers 20 and 21 still have to get done and I'm just promising you if you'll live it even for a short period of time, like you're talking about. You're doing your top 3. I learned that from Tim Ferris. But when you live these priorities, all the other stuff either goes away completely or it gets done without you having to give it a lot of energy. Setting priorities is one of the key time management techniques. Kamala Chambers: I'm going to back you up here and say this absolutely works. I'm able to get so much done this way. And I know there's the desire to try to do everything and we pile it all on and people just get burned out. What do you think passion, desire, and inspiration has to do with this? See the vision of your life Jay Papasan: Yes. When someone truly sees the vision for their life, it often evokes this need to be making progress towards it and it can be hungry and impatient especially among entrepreneurs. Many of us are fidgety about it. The idea of being really active often takes priority over being productive, activity over productivity and what we are trying to get them to do is just start with the big one. Start with those top one, two, or three and what I love about that when we go back to the overwhelm is on those days when I know I'm not done with my priority and I got it done before noon. Because I've launched my day with it, I feel kind of righteous the rest of the day. There is this sense of satisfaction that I know that my number one priority got checked off already. And even if I have a bad afternoon, I don't feel the same way I do as if that's still hanging over my head at 3 o'clock. And then I get it done right before I get home. Just flipping the conversation to let's start with the most important thing just released a lot of stress for me. Luis Congdon: As I'm hearing you two kind of get back and forth here and talk about this one thing and the extreme Pareto, I can't help but feel the sense like you two are more enlightened that me because I'm the kind of person that has 10 tabs opened on my computer. I flipped back and forth through the different tabs through different tasks and I get this hit of inspiration, "Oh! I got to make this call," and so I'll stop what I'm doing in the different tabs. I still need to learn some time management techniques. I'm curious from you, do you find this sometimes with people, I can't help but feel the sense of, "Oh my god, this could potentially threaten my way of doing things that feels like it's being successful but is it really being successful." Have you found that people like myself who kind of cringe at the idea of trying to shrink down my to-do list so much that then I just feel like, "Oh my god, what about the other things?" I know you touched on this. What is your experience been with all of that? Jay Papasan: All right. I'm going to give tough first and then I'm going to let you completely off the hook. Luis Congdon: All right. Kamala Chambers: Wait, don't let them off the hook. Jay Papasan: No, but this is coming from your coach, from the person who cares a lot. Most people are really successful in spite of most what they do, applying time management techniques being the one. I think when we look up, we're kind of aware of all the things we do and we're unaware of this stuff that we're doing unconsciously. Like you're successful, you're nailing it so you look up and say, "This program can't be that broke." And we're all a little resistant to change but the reality is everybody could be a lot more efficient. We're not advocating that people become robots. We're not advocating that they lose that sense of creative wander. I'm a writer. You even described 20 tabs or whatever, I've got you beat. I have a browser and it's just got all these articles opened. When I'm in creative mode, I'm kind of wandering through that. That's the creative state of mind that's very important to me but it has its place. We're just asking people launch your days with priority that’s one of the important time management techniques. So you don't have to be this way all day. In fact, people can't sustain it. It's not sustainable to be that focused all that time. However, when you wake up in the morning, we a have thing called the focusing question. What's the one thing I can do, just by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary? Kamala is like she has figured that out what are the most important time management techniques. She knows what that is for her. The rest of us have to ask. Sometimes, they have to ask every day. You go to that list. You figure out your 1, your 2, your 3, and you just start there. When you do those things, that's when I coach people particularly about time management techniques.The myth of multitasking and implementing time management techniques We have a whole chapter on multitasking. Learning the skill of multitasking is one of the important aspect of time management techniques. I'm not asking you stop multitasking all the time but when you know you're working on your number one priority, it’s probably a good idea not to have Twitter opened while you're doing that. Just a small dose of extreme focus has magnificent benefits for the rest of your day. You don't have to abandon your work style. Prioritizing each day will help you get amazing results - Jay Papasan Luis Congdon: That's totally awesome and that question to me is such a beautiful question because one of the things that Kamala and I really focus on is having a lifestyle that has enough freedom so that we can travel the world. We can automate parts of our business while mastering time management techniques. We can connect with people but we also have plenty of time to choose and pick and have what we want in regards to our business, our private life, and our relationship. I think we are asking that question. When you ask that question, I was like, "That's a question I love asking myself on a regular basis." Jay Papasan: It eliminates a lot. I think that one of the titles we cater around at one point was just clarity that the people who tend to achieve the most in life seem to have the clearest idea of whether going even if it's just like north. They don't even know what the destination is but they know they're supposed to go north. When you ask yourself a question like the focusing question in respect of learning time management techniques, it really forces you to narrow it down to one thing. It does give you a sense of where your priorities lie and just by that default, that little exercise I role played earlier, by knowing out of all this stuff on your to-do list, that there is 1, 2, 3, even a 4 and a 5. What it lets you know is all this other stuff isn't as important. You get both of those benefits, the clarity about what isn’t you really should be in your sights and the other stuff that you might be doing for fun. You can also just kind of let it lie. If you can learn how to focus, you can master time management techniques easily. So there's just so many benefits to just that little bit of taking a moment and I tell people just get an egg time. I've got one on my Chrome. I've just got it bookmarked for egg timer. I set a timer for like 3 minutes. I'll go to my task sheet and say "What is my number 1?" That's just a little exercise I can do and you don't take any longer than that to identify your priority to what I always say is most people know what it is but because they don't stop long enough to ask the question, the just walk around feeling guilty for not addressing it. Luis Congdon: Another thing that's just happened that's really awesome for me here Jay is that I just got coaching. You guys are listening, this is why I encourage people to podcast is because we just got done having a coaching session and I feel more clear about how I want to wake up and do my, "to-do list" because I'm the kind of person that makes this long list with a bunch of boring stuff on there. I'm just like, "That'll get done the fastest. I'll do that one first." However, what you really helped me rewire myself for is what's the one thing, the two, and the three, what are these one things that I can wake and if I do these, they're the most leverage for my time and they're the kinds of things that would potentially eliminate everything else, prioritizing things is really one of the important time management techniques. Jay Papasan: Yeah, you got it, prioritizing things is one of the time management techniques. That's the simplest form of the process if you wanted to take it one notch up to make those things. Now you know what your priorities are or priority, ideally. You want to kind of time block it which all it means is make an appointment with yourself to do that every day and I'm betting that you probably do this. There's probably some rituals to your morning. There are things that you do on a regular basis most days whether it's just meditating or working out or how you do your breakfast or maybe even just how you fix your coffee, and each of what you do needs some time management techniques. We interviewed some of the most successful people in the world regarding essential time management techniques. A lot of them made their one thing a ritual. They had a standing appointment. First thing they did in their office or often before they got to it, they were already addressing that thing. In our research, I could go into the long research but there's a study in British Journal of Health Psychology, if you just make that appointment in time, just navigate, then you're going to do the thing you know you have to do, you're about three times more likely to do it. Just that simple act triples your effectiveness. Kamala Chambers: Really powerful. I'm wondering, what are some of the biggest stumbling blocks that people come across when they try to implement time management techniques? Jay Papasan: Okay. So the biggest challenge is first and foremost, to stay willingness while implementing time management techniques. They can intellectually get the 80/20 but if they aren't willing to be accountable to it, to hand themselves over to it, they'll often stumble because they've maybe blocked off an hour each morning to try to focus on the priorities. This is going to be my working on the business time or working on myself-time, whatever your priority is, not the other stuff, and then the fire breaks out. Something urgent but unimportant happens. That is probably the moment of truth for a lot of people is they're going to stumble a few times. They're going to get distracted and then they're going to think, "Well, this thing doesn't really work." I encourage folks and in our programs to try restrained together a series of days. Just give it a couple of weeks and see if you don't start to see results. I mean, really rapidly, but that instinct to go jump on whatever the fire is, an argument or something happens on social media, if you are kind of just shut all of that away just for a few days in a row, you'll look up at the end of those days and you'll see the results for what they are. It shows up much faster than people anticipated. So, it's battling those distractions. That's got to be the number one thing. Luis Congdon: This really reminds of the interview that we're going to be having here shortly with Dr. Gay Hendrix and we're going to be talking with him about his book in his own breakthrough that he wrote about in his book called The Big Leap and inside that book, he's talking about a very similar thing that you're talking about and more about time management techniques. For him, The Big Leap is identifying what your zone of genius is. That one thing that you light up and it has the most leverage for you and your business and finding ways that you can just do that and do less of everything else and it really speaks to the same thing. It's really fascinating that your book, at a time when we have a lot of tabs open, we're constantly bombarded with social media, we have our phones, we have friends. Like, most of the things that we're doing, we're trying to multitask all the time. We're driving, we're listening to music, we're on a phone call, we're listening to the GPS and your book comes out at a time that it seems like everything is pulling us the opposite way and then your book comes and people are really loving it due to amazing time management techniques it offers. Jay Papasan: Well, thank you for saying that. I think that we've identified six lies between people and success, overlooking time management techniques one. That was the convention we used in. The number two was multitasking. And when I give keynotes or when we're teaching material, it's probably the one that most universally people are like, "Woah, that's me". We're all guilty of it. It's the age we live in. I mean right now, I can't walk through the park without people bumping into you because they're playing Pokemon Go when they're supposed to be walking their dog. So, you've gotten this thing going on. Again, I just say, if you know what your number priority is, can you just take a moment and say, "Can I create a bunker for myself? Is there a place?” I know this is important. This is what your next guest is going to talk about how prioritizing things is important in implementing time management techniques. If it's truly your passion, it's worth making this one investment so that you can do it right. One of the areas that it hit home for me, this implies to every area of your life. I looked at as a working dad, what's the one thing I can do to make sure that I'm constantly engaging with my kids at these different areas and for many years, I wanted to have bedtime. I wanted to read to them every single night and a kid will teach you, you can't multitask. You can't have your phone out and be reading them a book, right? See, you laugh but it's so true. Like, we could get it and we will tell our kids to behave this way and when we're at our best as parents, we behave that way with our kids. But then, we go to work and --Implementing time management techniques in relationships Luis Congdon: I can't multi task with Kamala either. If I try to have a conversation with her and I pull out my phone, she's like, "Which conversation are you having? The phone or with me? You got to decide" and I'm like, "I'm just responding to someone really quick. I can listen to you." Kamala Chambers: I will not talk to anyone if they're on their phone. Jay Papasan: God bless you for that, right? I think I have all these intellectual reasons like we really point out. Like, 28% of your day is loss to this ineffectiveness. You lose on average I think 6 to 10 IQ points when you're multitasking. I can go through all the science on that but the thing that hits home for people was actually a little line at the end of that chapter and you're hitting on it now. The things that actually matter the most are our relationships and the people that we love most. When we can't even give them the respect of our full attention, what is that saying about how we're going to succeed or fail in those relationships? So, good for you on calling our friend, Luis on that. I've been called on it. My Mets are in the World Series or whatever and I really wanting to have my phone out under the table. I get it but we don't want to that person in the moments of truth of our life that matter most. And that's the whole point of this book. You don't have to be perfect all the time. Your ability to prioritize things will help you to be wildly successful, not perfection. - Jay Papasan So I love that you've been called on that. We all have. Being aware of it, we don't always treat our work with that much respect. If it's our lives work, our life is at risk then just like our relationships would be. That's what I try to tell people. Give your work that much respect as well. Luis Congdon: That's beautiful. Kamala Chambers: Yeah. And you love it he's been called on it but he doesn't like it. Jay Papasan: I don't like it when I've been called on it but I know it's good for me. That comes from love, right? Are multitaskers good at time management techniques? Kamala Chambers: I have a question that's kind of a side note here. You were talking about the research behind people's IQ, getting lower when they're multitasking and there's research about women are natural multitaskers. Have you seen anything of the difference between the IQ drops between the sexes? Does it also mean that women are good at adopting time management techniques? Jay Papasan: No, I haven't seen it broken out but I know that is largely a myth. I think it was Stephen Colbert who coined the word, "Truthiness,” that may have any relevancy with the time management techniques. Kamala Chambers: Truthiness? Jay Papasan: Right. It sounds true therefore it must be true and the idea that women are better multitaskers because they had to tend to the kids while they work in the fields for millennia. It makes sense therefore we wanted to be true but I actually don't think there's any proof that they're any better at multitasking than men. Neither they are good at adopting time management techniques. Kamala Chambers: All right, all right listeners. I want to hear what you listeners have to say about that. Oh man, the drama. Luis Congdon: Before you wrap up here Jay, I have the question because as we've been talking about being single-mindedness and picking out the things that were really good at or the activities and tasks that for us will give us the most power, I've heard this from a lot of people that are successful from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Tim Ferris and a variety of really incredibly successful people where you mentioned it briefly where you said a time or for 2 or 3 minutes just to think about your success list and things that you're going to be writing down as your 1, 2, or 3 things that are really important for you. Have you found that if we set aside 20 minutes or 15 minutes and focus on that one task are we more successful? Or that’s one of the best time management techniques? Is there certain amount of time that you found that on average is the best amount of time for most people? What do you think about this? Jay Papasan: Well, I think you're referring to the Pomodoro Method and I definitely played with that and this is the idea that we need to break our focus every 20-25 minutes and then we get a fresh spurt of focus. What I know is that focus is a muscle. It's like a fast twitch muscle and that it diminishes very rapidly. But I also know that if you're going back to your future guest, when we're in our passion zone and we're working at the edge of our abilities, you've also heard the term flow, correct? Luis Congdon: It's such a beautiful state to be in. Jay Papasan: Yes. When we're at that edge of our abilities, we do lose track of time and I personally, I want to hit flow when I'm writing and researching so I do not set clocks for that sort of work because I can achieve flow there. My work is best when I achieve flow, that comes from mastering time management techniques and I really don't want anything jarring me out of it. I have very little science. This is my personal experience. So for those things where flow matters, this idea of getting in the zone, if you are familiar with it, it's a huge, huge asset when we can get there. And you have to be pushing to the edge of your abilities and then usually something like a hobby or passion that we can lose ourselves in. That's amazing. However for things like email, I tried to get into email on social media during three windows throughout the day. I usually set a clock 20-25 minutes because in my experience with the volume of messages and things that are happening, that is work that truly will expand whatever time I give it. So I just limit it. And now, I'm playing a game. How many emails can I completer before that clock goes out? I think that's the idea they call batching. For things that tend to be a little bit repetitive, we're not really going to get into flow unless that's just how quickly we can do them. I love using timers for that to quickly and effectively get it off my plate and then move to the next things. So, that's my 2 philosophies; big blocks of time for my most important work, little blocks of time for the ton of stuff. That’s how do we need to implement time management techniques. Luis Congdon: Beautiful. It's been really wonderful to hear your insight regarding time management techniques and we don't always need hard science to prove something to us. Our own experience is enough and I'm in total agreement with everything you just said. Do you have any last messages for the audience? Anything that you feel that you want to recap or anything that we left missing out? Jay Papasan: I just want to encourage people, if this is resonating for you, if you're thinking of something that maybe you should be doing that you're not doing is just make a commitment to try to do it tomorrow. I think that when people effectively take even one step towards self-improvement but they do it within a very short period of time like 24 hours, the odds go to the roof that they're going to continue because often the first step, it's what I tell you to put your running shoes by your bed, just the first act that first domino can create just enough momentum to keep you going so if that's been haunting you and a lot of people will come out of the audience or say they've read the book and like, "Oh! I realized that I was neglecting this relationship" or "I was neglecting this." Make a commitment right now to make even the tiniest amount of progress tomorrow or today but no later and see what happens from that. Kamala Chambers: Thank you so much for that. It's been a blast having you. It's been fantastic having you on the show. Thank you for talking about The One Thing with us, getting us all more focused and teaching amazing time management techniques. Jay Papasan:Thank you so much! Read MORE - Click HERE   MUST HAVE RESOURCES The One Thing by Jay Papasan & Gary Keller 80/20 Principle Book by Richard Koch  The Big Leap by Dr. Gay Hendricks Want to make a big impact and have a thriving business? - Launch a Podcast Guide  WHAT TO LISTEN TO NEXT Social Media Branding – Cherie Aimee Secret of Success – Jack Canfield Time Management Techniques – Jay Papasan 

Webinar presented by Harry Kenworthy of QPIC, hosted by Mark Graban and KaiNexus on September 13, 2016. Ten Commandments for Lean in Government (and Beyond) In this webinar, you will learn: - The top 10 commandments for creating a Lean culture - The benefits of creating Dynamic Daily Data Collection for greater employee engagement - The only 3 things Lean leaders truly need to do - The "True North" principles in a Thinking People System (TPS) - How to start a Lean organizational journey About the Presenter: Harry Kenworthy is Principal and Manager of the Quality and Productivity Improvement Center (QPIC, LLC). He worked with Dr. W. Edwards Deming in 1983-85 on a series of seminars, and has spoken at over 90 conferences on Quality, Productivity, Lean, and Six Sigma. He has been published several magazines including Quality Progress, Purchasing, and Government Finance Review. Harry also had working relationships with Dr. Joseph Juran and Dorian Shainin. He was one of the first practitioners to apply Lean in the Government sector in the mid-90’s. Harry’s consulting work has included numerous Government processes that have been improved by removing waste, reducing costs, or increasing revenues in a variety of operational steps while reducing overall process cycle times and improving customer service. Harry is a founder of the Connecticut Quality Council and chaired CBIA’s (Connecticut Business and Industry Association) Manufacturing Council, a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Examiner from 1989-1991, and has held a CT Professional Engineer license and a Certified Quality Engineer designation.

Episode #198 is a discussion with Harry Kenworthy about his work bringing Lean into local and state governments. We had a great conversation that touches on the influence of Dr. W. Edwards Deming and many other concepts that might be of interest even if you're not interested in "Lean Government" and the work happening there. Harry is Principal and Manager of the Quality and Productivity Improvement Center (QPIC, LLC), a consulting organization he founded in 1984 and has been with full time since 2004. He worked with Dr. Deming in 1983-85 on a series of 2 day seminars throughout the US, sponsored by MIT. He has spoken at over 90 conferences on Quality, Productivity, LEAN, and Six Sigma, and has been published several magazines including Quality Progress and Purchasing. He also had working relationships with Dr. Joseph Juran and Dorian Shainin. He was one of the first practitioners to apply LEAN in the Government sector in the mid-90's. Harry was also a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Examiner from 1989-1991, a licensed Professional Engineer and a Certified Quality Engineer. He worked at a NYSE listed, global manufacturer, for 26 years in a variety of capacities: Operations Manager, Division Manager, Group VP and, for his last 3 years, as Corporate VP, Manufacturing. He was the Executive Lean Six Sigma (LSS) Champion: leading the LSS effort and developing the LSS training program, which incorporated the best of traditional Six Sigma (DMAIC), LEAN, and a series of Specialized Problem Solving Techniques. He provided LSS training in the US, Europe, Japan and China. For 9 years, he was on the Board of Directors of a Japanese Joint Venture based in Nagoya, Japan. The JV was a key supplier to Toyota and Harry was able to learn about LEAN through Toyota. He also had a long term relationship with JUSE (Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers) which administered the Deming Prize in Japan and had the honor of visiting several Deming Prize winning companies. Harry holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Materials Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MBA in Finance from Syracuse University. Please leave a comment and join the discussion about the podcast by visiting the blog page for this episode at http://www.leanblog.org/198. For earlier episodes of the Lean Blog Podcast, visit the main Podcast page at www.leanpodcast.org, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple iTunes.