Frequently asked questions
What is High Reliability?
Reliability is, "getting the expected outcome through the expected time. Unfortunately, it has become popular to add the adjective, "Highly" to the term. A system delivers what is expected, or doesn't. Something is reliable or it is not. Now, if one wants to compare two or more entities, an appropriate modifier could be, "higher" or "lower" reliability where all entities achieve the expected outcome through the expected time but at least one pair achieves better or worse outcomes and/or earlier or later failure.
Why the debate about Lean or Six Sigma?
Anyone who has worked in a High Reliability Organization (HRO), especially one who has designed products or services for an HRO has:
How will we know we are a High Reliability Organization?
You will be alone, at least in some industries. In industries where HROs exist, you will own a significant market share and be earning higher than average financial margins. HROs have the highest performance to customer expectations, for the desired lifecycle and lower cost of poor quality which drains customers, your associates and your profit/margin.
How long does it take to become a High Reliability Organization?
3 or more years is empirically what we find for organizations that are delivering quality to the customer well today, but may not be the most reliable in its realm. Much more for those struggling in performance. The good news is a knowledgeable and acting leadership team can speed the journey by investing in its associates' reliability skills, partnering with HRO suppliers, staying close to its customers and "Utilizing the 3Ms (1. Measure process quality 2. Manage to these measures in real-time and 3. Make it easier for associates to achieve reliability.)
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September 8, 2016
The 3Ms of Improvement great leaders utilize are:
1. Measure 2. Manage to the measure 3. Make it easier
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Measuring patient experience is not new in healthcare. However, measuring the right things at the right time are still a struggle for many. Healthcare is complex. One measure of complexity is the count of measures. For acute care hospitals, there are 13 que...
August 31, 2016
Mikel Harry in my latest book, "Leading High Reliability Organizations in Healthcare," CRC Press 2016, shares the history of integrating the equation Y = f(x) into Six Sigma. In English, the equation can be read as "an outcome is a function of the inputs." Bill Smith and Mikel did not invent the equation, but found its message important in designing systems and...
June 4, 2016
The Broad Street Pump - Dr. John Snow found this pump in his problem solving effort to find what was contributing to deaths from cholera in London. Dr. Snow found the pump by using a concentration diagram showing where people who died from cholera lived. I took this picture of a replica of the pump on Broad Street now named Broadwick Street in London.
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