Recently, our marketing system faced a challenge when one of our interns accidentally sent over a thousand emails to customers when he only intended to send one. This mistake could have resulted in significant damage to our company's reputation and customer trust. However, instead of simply blaming the intern for the mistake, we took a step back and examined our marketing system using a combination of Deming and Lean principles.

Firstly, we identified that our instructions lacked clarity and that our software needed better safeguards. After a thorough review of the marketing system, we realized that the intern missed a critical step while sending the email, which led to the mistake. The instructions failed to mention that the intern should check if the software was set to send the email to all subscribers instead of just the intended recipient. Additionally, our software didn't have adequate safeguards in place to prevent such a mistake from happening.

Next, we applied Deming's...