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#1 Woman in the history of Process Improvement and Operational Excellence

The female equivalent of ‘W. Edwards Deming' or Joseph Juran, Lillian Gilbreth understood the principles of Lean and Six Sigma 60 years before those names even existed for process improvement.

 

Together with her husband, Frank, the couple placed high value on efficiency when managing an organization. Their management theory outlined three main points:

1. Reduce the number of motions in a task.

Frank and Lillian coined the term "therbligs," or elemental motions required for tasks in the workplace. They used these 18 units to analyze how tasks were completed – searching for an object with eyes or hands, grasping an object with hands, assembling and disassembling two parts, etc. From there, they'd figure out which motions were necessary, then eliminate any unnecessary motions to increase efficiency.

2. Focus on the incremental study of motions and time.

As engineers, Frank and Lillian closely studied motion and time to calculate the most efficient way to complete a given task. Taking the scientific approach, they measured time and motion to 1/2000 of a second to understand what works best. Their insight was unlike that of most other theorists, as they channeled physical science rather than psychology.

3. Increase efficiency to increase profit and worker satisfaction.

Your main goal as a leader should be increasing efficiency in each individual employee, and in the organization as a whole. Not only will this method save time, it will also afford you a higher profit and happier workers.

Lillian Gilbreth

 

See also:

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_9RlfBdLvE8

 

Lillian Evelyn Moller Gilbreth was an American psychologist, industrial engineer, consultant, and educator who was an early pioneer in applying psychology to time-and-motion studies. She was described in the 1940s as "a genius in the art of living." Wikipedia

 

Died: 2 January 1972, Phoenix, Arizona, United States

Hard Facts of Business Efficiency by Frank Woollard

Frank Woollard was a British industrial engineer in the 1920s, and he said:

“This principle of ‘benefit for all’ is not based on altruistic ideals – much as these are to be admired – but upon the hard facts of business efficiency.”     

Minitab analysis of DOE Catapult experiment in classroom

British Shipyards did not learn the process improvement techniques of Shigeo Shingo.

Apart from Shigeo Shingo's obvious success with the Toyota Production System, one other notable achievement was creating a production system in ship building at Mitsubishi Shipbuilding in Japan from 1950 to 1953 that reduced ship production time by 50%.  Why did British Shipyards not follow these same techniques for improvement ? As a result the British Ship building industry was essentially beaten into submission by the 1980's and most British Shipyards were closed.   Were the British managers of Shipyards and British politicians complacent or ignorant or just not up to the challenge of changing the processes and culture and therefore 'threw in the towel' ?

http://www.process-improvement-japan.com/shigeo-shingo.html

Health Care IT using Six Sigma as basis for improvement....not software

Orlando, Florida : Health IT Conference, Feb 19 - Feb 23, 2017

“You have to take a hard honest look at what you are doing today. Six Sigma is good at that,”

said Chuck Spurr the CIO at Shields Health Care Group, speaking on the opening day ofthe Health IT Conference in Orlando, Florida

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/secret-shields-success-six-sigma

“First we were throwing software at the problem, but that’s a problem with IT. We build to the specs we are given. So when software alone doesn’t solve issues, we blame everybody, the users, the specs, we blame all over the place.”

In Six Sigma, “all over the place” doesn’t cut it, especially when it comes to the data leaders need to been able to trust in order to make decisions.

Breaking it down, Six Sigma is all about organizing processes and fostering open communication. For example, Spurr said Shields previously grappled with a low rate of payment from patients, but there were concerns that removing patients who wouldn’t pay would cause an uproar among the referral community. The problem, though, was Shields didn’t have any real data to support those concerns. So Shields isolated one pilot location to measure complaints, and in the end, they really didn’t have many. Couple that with the launch of a pre-service collection process and Shields ended up getting 30 percent of payments up front. Something they had not expected.

See video of Chuck Spurr talking 6-Sigma here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnd0szNrC2A

Respect for the Human Worker in the new Lean world of Robotic Process Automation ( RPA )

The new technology of 'Robotic Process Automation' ( RPA )  has the potential for huge cost savings for companies however NOT by replacing workers with computers or robots.

Instead RPA allows repetitive or logic based process decisions to be done by computer programs ( Robots) rather than humans and thus eliminating the following wastes:

1.  Eliminates the Waste of waiting for a decision from a human. Robots work 24/7 365 days and never take breaks.  They are always available to make decisions and hence there is  zero waiting time. 

2. Eliminates the Waste of the incorrect decision being made by Human Error.  Decisions instead are based on Business Rules and Logic that has been  designed and carefully programmed by a consensus of the process and business experts, with careful consideration of customer needs and expectations.   

3.  Elimination of Re-Work, Scrap, Lost Customers or Penalty costs due to incorrect decisions being made by Human error.   Reduction in the Cost of Poor Quality ( COPQ), an important concept in Lean Six Sigma, first introduced by Joseph Juran in the 1980's.

4.  Elimination of repetitive, tedious and time-consuming transactional activities for Humans that reduce worker moral and reduce time allowed for customer relationship building, sales, design / redesign and problem solving.

Use of RPA allows time for workers to be involved in Value-Added activities that cannot be done by Robots such as 

• Relationship Building with customers,   
• Sales and Marketing/ advertising
• Design or Re-design or products or Services,   
• Design of Re-design of process,  
• Programming of the Robots for greater and greater efficiency.  

By John Dennis

May 28th 2017