PDSA Tortoise and Solution Leaping Hare Unisex T-shirt

GO SLOW TO GO FAST

‘Tis a time-tested truism.

You may know it as slow and steady wins the quality improvement race.

Aesop’s tortoise and hare, along with their timeless moral, belong on a Plan Do Study Act t-shirt. It makes a great gift for operational excellence pros, six sigma belts, industrial engineers, and lean manufacturing experts.

The all-original earth-tone artwork is brought to you by the versatile Brazilian artist, Denio Viana.

PDSA is the scientific method applied to continuous process improvement. Like science, it’s iterative and requires patient objective observation.

Our use of Aesop’s characters sees them as colleagues. The tortoise is a continuous process improvement thinker and the hare is an impatient coworker racing off to apply a sure-fire solution. You know all the old chestnuts: adding staff, reorganizing, adding new technology, yada yada…

#IYKYK

About that fable:

If somehow you don’t know the fable of the humble and reliable tortoise racing against the lazy and arrogant hare, here it is: The hare teases the slow-moving tortoise, both of whom are forest creatures. The tortoise challenges the hare to a trail race through the forest. The tortoise eats the hare’s dust coming out of the starting blocks and in fact (in fable) becomes soon confident of victory, he, um, takes a nap. The hare awakens to discover he has lost the race. What’s unknown are the odds the tortoise gave himself of winning. Meh. We’ll never know.

In MCMXLI, Warner Bros. put out a Merrie Melodies cartoon called, Tortoise Beats Hare, in which Cecil Turtle defeated Bugs Bunny. Cecil cheated by positioning an identical tortoise at the finish line.

Cecil won again when Warner Bros. staged a rematch in MCMXLIII called, Tortoise Wins By A Hare. Thanks to a case of Shakespearean mistaken identity, the hare mafia successfully delays Bugs while carrying Cecil across the finish line.

About PDSA:

Edwards Deming credited PDCA (Plan Do Check Act) to Walter Shewhart. Later Deming dropped “check” in favor of “study” because he felt it better matched the spirit of science.

Today you find both floating around. We at QI Curiosities wish the “O” from the very original was still in common use. A leading O, as in OPDCA stood for “observe” because it’s easy to jump to testing solutions with PDCA, but it’s vitally important to observe the current condition, you know, as science dictates.

LIMITED TIME ONLY!

Offered exclusively to QI Curiosities customers.

Here at Quality Improvement Curiosities, buying in small batches pays! Get an escalating discount when you buy multiple shirts in any combination. Buy 3-4 and get 15% off. Buy 5 and get 20% off. Buy 6+ and get 25% off.

• 100% combed and ring-spun cotton (Heather colors contain polyester)
• Fabric weight: 4.2 oz./yd.² (142 g/m²)
• Pre-shrunk fabric
• Side-seamed construction
• Shoulder-to-shoulder taping
• Blank product sourced from Nicaragua, Mexico, Honduras, or the US

This product is made especially for you as soon as you place an order, which is why it takes us a bit longer to deliver it to you. Making products on demand instead of in bulk helps reduce overproduction, so thank you for making thoughtful purchasing decisions!

Size guide