{"id":502,"date":"2025-12-28T09:57:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T13:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanpippenger.com\/?p=502"},"modified":"2025-12-28T09:57:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T13:57:16","slug":"common-cause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanpippenger.com\/?p=502","title":{"rendered":"Common Cause?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the foundations of Dr. Deming’s teaching is the understanding of variation.\u00a0 There is variation in everything.\u00a0 You don’t think so?\u00a0 Deming said, “You cannot describe for me being exactly on time.”\u00a0 Silly you say.\u00a0 Try it.\u00a0 Any two people’s idea of meeting at noon could vary by at least 20 minutes, one-third hour.\u00a0 For me meeting at noon means arriving at 11:45 am, no later.\u00a0 You may show up at 12:10 and consider yourself on time.\u00a0 That there is variation in everything is one principle.\u00a0 Another is the idea that there are different kinds of variation.\u00a0 If you don’t learn anything else here, learn this.\u00a0 There are two kinds of variation, common cause and special cause.\u00a0 Common cause variation is inherit in the system you are using, an example being tardiness at work brought about by an alarm clock that loses 15 minutes a day.\u00a0 Special cause variation is unique to the situation and acts upon your system, an example being tardiness at work caused by stopping to help a stranded motorist.\u00a0 So now that you have an education, let’s take a test.\u00a0 Look at the picture.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>Answer this.\u00a0 Are we seeing common cause or special cause variation?\u00a0 The last person, probably a man, used the last piece of toilet paper and left the empty roll.\u00a0 Did he, I am almost certain it was a man, think, oh oh, out of toilet paper, someone better get in here and replace it, or did he look at his watch and think, oh my, look at the time, I better get back to work, or as I believe, did he just not think at all.\u00a0 Here is why I think it was the later.\u00a0 You could not know this, but in this company restroom the spare rolls are just three feet from where the person is sitting and in plain view, so this is not a good excuse, but what about time.\u00a0 I have replaced these rolls many times and timed it at 17 seconds.\u00a0 We could still use the “not enough time” defense were it not for texting.\u00a0 Texting?\u00a0 Yup, texting. This employee receives 20-30 texts a day and always finds the time to return them, so the time excuse has to be removed from consideration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the foundations of Dr. Deming’s teaching is the understanding of variation.\u00a0 There is variation in everything.\u00a0 You don’t think so?\u00a0 Deming said, “You cannot describe for me being exactly on time.”\u00a0 Silly you say.\u00a0 Try it.\u00a0 Any two … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanpippenger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanpippenger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanpippenger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanpippenger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanpippenger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/alanpippenger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835,"href":"https:\/\/alanpippenger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanpippenger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanpippenger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanpippenger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}