Career Black Belt Master Fully Endorses Critical Thinking

Dear Jerry,

Your response tells me you are getting what I am saying. Most issues go through the path of not needing statistical tools now. We like to think we are reserving our statistical tools for when needed, preventing a waste of our time. … I hired into to this company from an international manufacturer and I used only statistical tools and nothing else … . When I came to this company, I met Masters here who said:

“Hey, this critical thinking is a great way to start problem solving projects because you collect the info from the existing team members – thorough, simple and fast.”

It took me a while to really appreciate what they were saying. Once I became a coach of the critical thinking tools and had been through about 20 problem solving projects I really got to love the results I was getting. These tools really help with the group dynamics part of the team equation. Here (attached) is my Excel Workbook showing the analysis of a project where there was finger pointing at the material, the process and the customers-use environment. I was present and it was neat because we ruled all of these out logically because they did not fit the facts.

Rick Wells had coached me on how to use the BPI process to spot the elusive combination causes and interactions and for this project that type was the only cause idea that fit the facts. This convinced the team to go out and prove this logical analysis with a DOE. So this is an example for how critical thinking tools can set up a quick DOE.

… Jerry, this file has been sanitized …. I took the software package that the BPI team has developed for us and cut out all the stuff I don’t think you need to see right now … The BPI team has invested quite a lot of TLC creating the custom package to allow us to coach people who attend Critical Thinking courses to do their first applications over the phone or online.

We e-mail these PS templates around the world. I coach people in 3-4 other countries with the electronic forms BPI has created. Our team divided up the coaching and we closed over 800 projects in the first 6 months! Most [70 to 80%] did not require the extra information generated by a DOE analysis.

HBF
Black Belt Core Group
Innovation Leader and Master BlackBelt
Structured Critical Thinking Master