(See posts from 6/19 and 6/20 describing the blog-post defect I caused and my first 2 steps of problem-solving) In this final part to my mini-problem-solving example, I’ll describe what I’ve done to prevent future “defects” in my blog-posts. As you may recall, I wrote a blog post on Tue 6/18 but discovered that it DIDN’T appear on the “Juicy Quotes Plus” page of my website.

The root cause appears to be this: After writing the post, I failed to scroll down far enough to see the list of “Categories” and put a check mark in “Juicy Quote.”

As a solution (or “countermeasure”, as Lean experts often call it), I’ve decided to use a checklist. It lists the actions I must carry out after writing a new blog post to properly publish it. While writing the checklist, I recalled a few other “defects” I’ve cause in the past few months and included steps to prevent those defects as well. I’ve put a copy of the checklist at my desk, and one at the recliner where I sit in the morning while writing.

I used this checklist yesterday and it seemed to work fine. Note that I’ve included an “Inspection” step at the end to go to my website and confirm that the newly-published post is there. This inspection step implements the “in-station quality” point I made back on Monday 6/17 about the Lean topic of “Jidoka.” Inspection increases the chance that I will produce a defect-free blog post. I may be able to drop the inspection step after a while.

For this simple checklist, I don’t actually write a checkmark on the paper. I’m hoping I can just see each step with a glance. I’ll use it for a while and see if any more defects occur.

Hopefully, my experience with this defect can illustrate how simple, daily problem-solving should go.