I was driving the other day, listening to the 1980s music channel on XM Radio. The DJ announced a song by Duran Duran and it really sounded like “Juran Juran,” reminding me of the quality legend Joseph M. Juran. It made me chuckle to think of a band fronted by Juran (and maybe Dr. Deming playing keyboards).
I started a silly Twitter game asking people to come up with additional jokes with the hashtag #QualityTermBandName. Surprisingly, I got quite a few funny suggestions, my favorites in bold (and you can add more on Twitter or by posting a comment). Some of these are songs (and some of them in the hashtag were, as well). There were amazingly few repeats amongst the tweets….
The first reply came from @SimonCunnane:
https://twitter.com/SimonCunnane/statuses/172834285844299776
Fleetwood Womack
Simon also suggested:
- Maroon 5S
- Metallika(izen)
- The Kan Band
- Plain White T(aichi)'s
Then, @jeromytimmer tweeted:
Before Pink Floyd David Gilmour was in a band called Sigma 6.
#QualityTermBandName#forreal
Wow, that's a great piece of trivia.
Jeromy also suggested:
- INXSPC
- Men At Work (Cell)
- The Mudas of Invention
- Air Supply Chain
Other suggestions rolled in — posted here in no particular order:
@iamvinnyp tweeted:
- AC / D(MAI)C
- The Why – famous for their song “Teenage Waste-land”
- Lean Zeppelin and their song “Stairway to Perfection”
- The Andon Parsons Project
@Jaco4u contributed:
- David Lean Roth
- Alice in Supply Chains (I suggested they do a cover of the song “Supply Chain of Fools.”)
- Jidokas Priest
- A song by the Beatles: Hey Junka
- Ohno Doubt
@martinburnsuk come up with:
- A song by the Village People: It's fun to stay at the PDCA (I would call the band the Villiage Pareto, though)
A cynical contribution from @Kevin_Meyer
- A Flock of Consultants
- Andonna
From @timeback:
- Three (P) Dog Night
- Crowded House (of Quality)
- Jefferson Airplane (Simulation Game)
One from @schquirels:
- RIE Speedwagon
This one from @LeanSaskHealth made me laugh:
- Billy Hoshin (I suggested his song would be “Get Into My Gemba”)
One contribution from @TheLeanEngineer:
- Justin Time-berlake
- The opera singer Placido Demingo
- Andon and the Ants
- Florence and the Machine (that Changed the World)
- Hootie and the Flowfish
- The Grateful SMED
- Tom Peters & the Heartbreakers
- Noel & Liam Gallagher were in the band OEEsis
- The Jackson 5S
- Elton Jonah
Two from @oshendoschen:
- TOTO Quality Management
- The Muda Blues
- Vanilla ISO 9000 (“ISO, ISO, Baby”)
- Massive A-takt
Contributed by @oshendoschen:
- The No-Gos
- Journey (real band)
- Fishbone (real band)
- John Leanon and Poka-Yoke Ono
From @ChristinaKach:
- Frankie Variation & The Six Sigmas (which made me think of Frankie Value and the Four S's)
- Batchbox Twenty
- The All-American Defects
- (Pare)TOTO and their song “I bless the ways down in Gembaaaa”
- Kurtosis Cobain
- Joan Jett & the Shewharts
Contributed by @TomSouthworth:
- The Rolling (Throughput Yield) Stones and their song “(Takt) Time is on my side”
By @HIflyer:
- Ace of Bayes' Law – their song is “All That Shewharts”
- Dock-to-Dokken
- Rick Greenfield
I suggested a few more:
- SixSigma and the Banshees
- David Flowie
- A song from the band Culture Club: Kaizen Chameleon
- Lady Gemba
- The Dave Mudas Band
- A song from Fleetwood Womack: Don't Stop Continuously Improvin' (or Fleetwood Takt as @LeanAccountant suggested)
- And the opposite of this theme is the Salt ‘N Peppa song “Push It” (and “Let's Talk 5S Baby…” from @LeanAccountant)
- The Red Heijunka Peppers
- The rapper Demingem
- Hootie and the Batchfish
- Frankie Goes to Gemba
- The rap classic “Baby Got Takt” by Sir High-Mix-A-Lot
- Fiona Andon
- Barenaked Leanies
- John Changeover Mellencamp
- The rap group from the 90s — Takt Team (“Whoomp, There It Is!“)
- A duo that raps about fishbone diagrams — Enimem and Enimem (the 4 M's, get it?)
Photo Credit:
Duran Duran 
photo credit: DDFic
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Lean Zeppelin singing ‘Whole Lotta Lean’. :-)
5S Electrical Band
Run DM(AI)C
Process Village People
Just this morning I heard Howard Jones’ “No One Is To Blame” and thought it would be a good Lean song. Maybe just switch the title to “No One Is To Blame (It’s The Process)”
A fun post for my Monday morning. Better copywrite it before Doctor Muda or Bill Muri steal the jokes!
[…] of Mark Graban, if you haven’t seen his post: Weekend Fun – Quality Related Band Names (#QualityTermBandName), you need to click that link and go have a […]
GM’s Drill Deep (Purple)
Emotion Regression – Built by Blood
LA MUDA – Kevin Roldan
I dropped these on twitter too, but here they are for everyone’s fun:
Def(ect) Leppard
Depeche Muda
VOCing Heads
Juran Juran
Interesting suggestions. More manufacturing than quality-related – I was in a one hit band called “Cold Rolled Steel” (after seeing callout on a print)
For Floyd fans, the trivia above is incorrect: Sigma 6 was one of Pink Floyd’s earlier names, but that did not include David Gilmour.
Lean (Queen)
Mudonna