I was excited to host and moderate this recent webinar on January 17th at 1 pm ET.
Register using the link below to view the recording of the session–it's free:
A Poka-Yoke Primer: Mistake-Proofing and Error Reduction
It was presented by John Grout, an expert on mistake-proofing and author of the free PDF eBook, “Mistake-Proofing the Design of Health Care Processes.”
Below is a preview of the webinar–the video is followed by a transcript below.
You can also use this contest to enter to win one of three signed copies of my book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation (the contest is now closed).
Listen:
Transcript:
Mark Graban:
Welcome to the KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Podcast. I'm Mark Graban and today we are doing a short preview of our upcoming webinar. It's going to be presented on January 17 at 01:00 Eastern. It's titled A Poka Yoke Primer: Mistake-Proofing and Error Reduction. You can look in the show notes or the YouTube description for the registration link, or you can go to kinexus.com webinars.
Mark Graban:
We're joined today by the presenter of that session. He is John Grout, the David C. Garrett, Jr. Professor, former dean, and award-winning teacher in the Campbell School of Business at Berry College. John, how are you today?
John Grout:
I'm doing great today. Good to be with you.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Thank you for doing this preview. Thank you in advance. I'm excited to hear your presentation and to learn from you. On the 17th, I gave the briefest of introductions about your name, rank and serial number.
Mark Graban:
But could you tell us a little bit more in your own words? Who is John Grout and what do you do and study?
John Grout:
Well, way back in the day, I was asked to create a Total Quality Management course back when Total Quality Management was a thing. And I said, I don't think that's a thing. I'm going to do a quality management course. And I started studying, and one of the people I ran across was a guy named Shigeo Shingo, who proposed something called Poka Yoke, which is the Japanese words for mistake-proofing. And that was back in the early ninety s.
John Grout:
And I read his work. It was fascinating and it didn't match up with some of the other quality techniques. So I've been studying it ever since then. And so I've written several articles on it. I've done a lot of consulting, helping people to think about mistakes.
John Grout:
And of course, it links really well with your latest book and how to think about mistakes. And so, I have curated examples of mistake-proofing over these several years. And one of the things that I've found is that as people start dealing with quality problems, human error is one of the hardest to deal with. You have so many statistical tools and managerial tools. None of them are quite what's needed to fix human error.
John Grout:
And so some of my consulting jobs, people came to me and they said we were all sitting around the factory going, how do you fix this problem? And so the reason my presentation, I hope will be useful for folks is that it will provide them with a new kind of vocabulary of responses that aren't blame and train. They aren't kind of statistically based and yet can be very effective and super low cost. Yeah.
Mark Graban:
And I've learned a lot from you over these years, John, and I was happy to be able to cite you and mention you in the book. So thank you for helping me with some of my thinking and trying to articulate principles and experiences here. So, for the session, tell us a little bit. It's going to be a bit of a unique format, for one. Maybe we can kind of focus on that and give us a bit of a preview of what people will learn, what lessons they'll walk away with.
John Grout:
Well, I think that lean, if nothing else, teaches us sometimes that less is more. And so I'm going to be doing a presentation that's going to be based on a Japanese presentation technique that started in Tokyo called pecha kucha. And people will say those characters differently depending on who you ask. But it's essentially doing 20 slides in 20 seconds, 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide. And so I will, in the midst of my presentation, have two six-minute and 40-second presentations that will be very rapid-fire and very concise.
John Grout:
And then, of course, I'll do an introduction before the first one. I'll have a little break in between, and then I'll do the second one. And after that, we'll just tie up some loose ends and then go to question and answer. I hope that kind of compacting all of this and making a nice digestible chunk will be beneficial for the audience.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, well, I'm sure it will be. And we'll have people attending from all sorts of industries and want everyone to feel welcome, regardless of whether they're working in manufacturing or in healthcare or in software development. Maybe just as a final question for you, John, there are opportunities to apply mistake proofing in virtually every workplace.
John Grout:
Right? There are. And it's those situations where you know what you're trying to do, but what turns out isn't exactly that.
Mark Graban:
Well, I'm looking forward to the session. And again, thanks in advance for doing this for us and our audience. John. Again, the webinar is going to be presented live January 17 at 01:00 Eastern. It will be recorded for those who aren't able to attend live, but if you are able to join us, you'll be able to ask your questions and participate in the session as John described it.
Mark Graban:
So again, the session is a poka yoke primer: mistake-proofing and error reduction. I think I said poka yoke. I've always heard it both ways.
John Grout:
I am agnostic about that.
Mark Graban:
But you can look for a link in the show notes or the YouTube description or go to kainexus.com slash webinars to sign up. John, thanks again.
John Grout:
You're welcome. Looking forward to it. Thanks.
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