(See yesterday’s post for Part 1 describing the defect I caused and my first steps of problem-solving)

An important early step in problem-solving is “Go to Gemba.” Gemba is the place where the problem happened. If the problem-solver DOESN’T go to gemba, it’s far too easy to make false assumptions about what caused the problem. “Assumptions” are one of a problem-solver’s biggest enemies.

For a manufacturing defect, Gemba is usually a workstation or machine. For my defect (in which my post was published and emailed, but did NOT appear on the “Juicy Quote Plus” page of my website), Gemba is the online “New Post” page where I write and publish my blog posts. There’s a sidebar next to the writing area where I make some choices about how and when my blog post will be published. Part way down that sidebar is a section that looks like this:

I must put a check-mark in the the “Juicy Quote” box in order for the post to appear on the “Juicy Quote Plus” page of my website. I generally write my posts on my laptop, and must therefore scroll down the sidebar in order to get to the “Categories” section. It appears that I simply skipped this step for the handful of posts that were missing from the “Juicy Quote Plus” page of my website. I went back to each “missing” post and set the category to “Juicy Quote.” They all immediately appeared on the Juicy Quote Plus page.

Problem solved? Not quite. I corrected the defective posts, which is good. But now I must improve my post-writing process to so it is “easier to do right” and the chance of a defect goes down.

More on that tomorrow in Part 3.