Even with the best of intentions people forget but when you are dealing with people’s medical conditions it can mean the differnce between life and death. But because using a simple checklist is so easy a solution people can get cynical about it. This is the KISS principle in action – Keep it simple stupid

I think this is a more common problem than many people realise – particularly with complex or tedious processes!!

You’re brother is correct about Guinness being a big contributor to quality management principles and techniques. In fact the most common statistical hypothesis test in use worldwide today is based on the t- distribution, a statistical table used to estimate probability in a normal distribution from small samples. The t-distribution as it is called was proposed by William Gosset, a Guinness employee, as an alternative to the Z distribution which was known to be error prone where only small samples were used (which in manufacturing is almost everywhere). Since Guiness employees were not permitted to publish papers (after one employee disclosed trade secrets in a publication) Gosset was forced to submit his theory under the pseudonym Student and so instead of receiving the recognition he deserved by having his name associated with the t distribution it was instead referred to as the ‘Students t distribution’ … very unfair … but today you will find him in wiki and he did receive the recognition he deserved from his fellow statisticians Pearson and Fisher who published and advocated his theories further.