The B.I.G. Blog

Remember the first time you went to that new restaurant down the block and it was SO GOOD! It was so good, you just had to take your friend there, but then… it wasn’t as good. Something was different. While this might make your dinner experience less than it could be, it (usually) won’t hurt you. In some industries, however, this amount of variation is unacceptable, because it could be deadly. Consider an airplane manufacturer. The processes they use to manufacture must be designed with the highest standards in mind and the tightest tolerances. A mistake on your plate at dinner is annoying. A mistake on your engine 32,000 feet in the air is lethal. So, we need a way to anticipate and test for issues in our processes and products to a specific, quantifiable standard.   Processes in Review When discussing process design a few weeks ago, we examined the IPO […]

Have you ever had an argument with someone close to you (of course the answer is yes!) Did you resolve the issue effectively the first time? The answer is probably no. Typically, these sorts of important, highly emotional problems are very thorny to untangle. Unless these conversations are approached in a rational, formulaic way, the results are often not good! The same is all too often true in business as well. While most issues in business do not appear to us to be extremely emotional, there is often something more than a profit motive underlying our disagreements. A coworker does not feel respected, someone has an attachment to a project, or perhaps personal issues are crossing the work threshold. Regardless, you work with people and nothing will change that until the robots take all our jobs. In their book Difficult Conversations, How to Discuss What Matters Most authors Bruce Patton, Douglas Stone, […]

You’ve evaluated your business, you’ve identified where your major issues are, and you have created a few processes using the IPO model designed to make things more efficient. But, you know you’re not done. The work is never finished! This is an infinite game and you’ve just started. This is where the PDCA Method comes in. Designed by W. Edwards Deming in the 1950’s at a statistical quality control seminar in Japan, the wheel you are used to seeing in fact has its roots in the Shewhart cycle. Shewhart was an American physicist and sometimes acclaimed “father of statistical quality control”. In 1939 he changed the core concept of his cycle from a linear process to one that is circular, with no end. Deming took this already good idea and added a fourth step. To Shewart’s initial three step process of specification – production – inspection he added redesign. Therein the structure […]