Blogs

If you are among the one or two people on this Earth who’ve never heard of Jeff Foxworthy, I guess I’ll need to clue you in.  I didn’t think there was anybody in that category, but, as you’ll see in a minute, I was wrong.

In 2012 the Detroit Tigers paid $26 million to a once-great player, whose best years were behind him.  I could not figure out the rationale for the hire.  The Tigers were getting much fewer hits per buck with Hunter than any other reasonable option.  Was General Manager Dave Dombrowski crazy?  Why would the Tigers do that?

…can change the process you're measuring.  Of course, quantum physicists declare that the act of measurement always changes the measured.  In the world of quality management we’re not dealing with such small scales.  But the concept still applies.

When we initiate quality improvement projects in business, we need to ask the question, “Are the results we’re getting simply the outcome of increased management attention to the issue?”  The worry is that after the project has been embedded as a standard procedure we assume that the benefits will continue. 

You come back to the house after a night on the town and you flip the switch in the hallway…nothing happens; no light.  You remember that the light on the porch was still on when you came in, so you know you have power to the house.  The other lights work, so you know that the breaker box is probably functioning.  You switch the light bulb...

This story comes from my friend, Jeff Veyera*, my co-host on the ASQ podcast “The Fearless Workplace”.  He tells it in his book “Culture is Everything”**.

Jeff was working for a large logistics company that handled auto parts among other materials.  One day he got an opportunity to visit a Toyota warehouse that had a function similar to one of their own.

When he got to the Toyota warehouse, he discovered some amazing facts!  The Toyota warehouse: