Six Sigma Reduces Delayed Starts in Special Labs

Another hospital’s radiology department is adopting Six Sigma to improve efficiency. In special labs, defects may take the form of missing orders, missing history and physicals, or problems with patient flow. All these can develop into bottlenecks that hinder the efficiency of the unit.

In May 2006, the Specials Radiology Department, Baptist St. Anthony’s Hospital in Amarillo, Texas started an improvement project. The goals were to improve start times, increase throughput, implement control mechanisms for continuous improvement and to provide feedback to ancillary departments concerning performance.

The project team began by scoping the subjective complaints of staff into a data collection tool and constructing a database. The DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) framework was utilized to accelerate the improvement process. Six Sigma tools were used in data analysis, Work-Out strategies were utilized in team meetings, and Lean was implemented for operational improvements.

The improvements:

Baptist St. Anthony’s Hospital Specials Laboratory Project Results
Metric	Baseline	Project Close	Improvement
Percent of Delayed Cases	79%	33%	46%
Total Number of Delays	189	88	101
Delays with the Department	28%	6%	22%
Orders Missing/Clarification	11%	0%	11%
Baseline Data from May, 2006. Project Close data from October, 2006

The percent of delayed cases dropped to 33 percent. Also, delays per case fell from 1.4 in May to .75 by October. Delays within the department decreased by 22 percent.

Read more…

Source:
iSixSigma Healthcare

Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Deployment, Healthcare, Lean Six Sigma, Processes, Six Sigma Organizations, Tools/Toolkits, iSixSigma

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Lean Six Sigma Improves Radiology Department at Watson Clinic in Lakeland, Florida

Have you sat on a hospital bench, in a cold room or corridor waiting for your turn? Have you waited feeling ill and scared about what the results of the impending test would be?

I’m sure, every one has gone through these situations at one time or another. Therefore, I say that hospital delays aren’t helping the patients at all.

The Radiology Department of Watson Clinic in Lakeland, Florida, is sensitive to the needs of their patients. Seeing their backlogs and delays, they decided to implement Lean Six Sigma.

The department identified three areas for potential improvement: CT, positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). At measurement, the following are found:

• Patient backlog for CT was at four days.
• Room schedule varied by up to 40 percent a day.
• Patient throughput was at two per hour per CT.
• Half of the exams were starting 15 minutes late or later.

Armed with Lean Six Sigma tools, the team then went to work for solutions. The CT Project Results are:

• CT backlog reduced to one day
• 90% of exams start on time
• 40% increase in CT capacity
• Dashboard implemented
• Increased outpatient volumes to 3.3 patients/hour
• Financial potential ~ $674,000 over one year

Read more…

Source:
iSixSigma Healthcare

*Photo from Stock.Xchng

Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Healthcare, Lean Six Sigma

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Six Sigma and Economic Myths

Over at PQ Systems eLine, David Schwinn talks about economic myths, being the truly global concern these days, and Six Sigma, and how to build on them.

Assuming the economic myth is, in fact, predominant in our organizations, Betty Sue Flowers (writer of “The American Dream and the Economic Myth”) has identified potential opportunities for building on that myth as we deepen our dream or enlarge our mission. Her opportunities provide some ideas for deepening the dream of your Six Sigma effort, as well. I’ve summarized them below:

1. “The economic myth supports a systems view of the world.” Our Six Sigma effort should consider mission, vision, values, products, services, structure, and throughput, decision-making, and learning processes. It should also remember that in a global economy, everyone’s in the game and that “It’s the connections, stupid.”
2. The economic myth is just a myth. It is only one way of looking at a very complex world. It can and, in fact, has changed and evolved over time as have the other myths we hold to be true.

So if we want to improve our Six Sigma efforts we might try making them:

• More personal by, for example, finding out what the folks who have to make it happen care about;
• More immediate, with both short term and long term participative goals, feedback, and learning systems;
• Larger and deeper, by examining and illuminating what our larger Six Sigma missions are, beyond making more money.

Read more…

*Photo from Stock.Xchng

Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Economy

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Six Sigma Reference: Why Managers Don’t Care About Processes

For any quality improvement to succeed, management must initiate it, or at the least support it. But what happens if management doesn’t care about processes or any quality improvements?

That is the biggest challenge. Six Sigma Qualtec released a whitepaper, which can guide you to get your management start the initiative. The whitepaper juxtaposes the reasons management give to justify their lukewarm attitude toward process improvement and the reality in an organization.

Download the whitepaper now: why-managers-dont-care-about-processes.pdf

Filed under: Processes, Six Sigma References

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Go Lean or Go Six Sigma?

Last Friday, I attended Neville Clarke-Philippine‘s seminar on Empowering Management for a Successful Lean Six Sigma. Armed with theories on Lean and Six Sigma, I went there to accompany two of my colleagues, one of them is our operations manager. I am glad that management had sent three people to a seminar like this, albeit only introductory.

Because the seminar was only an intro to a full-blown trainings on Lean and Six Sigma, I was expecting only to be hearing about the same Lean and Six Sigma insights that I had been reading and even writing about. To my surprise, one thing was made clear to me by the competent seminar facilitator—no other than Neville Clarke’s country manager, Maria Nenita Asuncion Concio.

Here are the things I learned:

• Know the processes of your organizations first.
• Determine what your organization needs to do by listening to the Voice of the Customer. If it needs to simplify processes or structure, going lean may be the way to go. If you need consistency, or you need to reduce variation in your products or outputs, going Six Sigma could be the answer.
• Knowing the need and determining which methodology to adopt is one important step to any improvement initiative.
• Once you know which improvement initiative—may it be Lean or Six Sigma—you need, then you arm yourself with the corresponding tool sets.
• If your organization needs both simplicity and consistency, then Lean Six Sigma may be the answer.
  
• Lean enables Six Sigma quality (reduced inventories, exposes quality issues); Six Sigma quality enables Lean speed (fewer defects means less time spent on reworks. (From Neville Clarke’s notes)
  
• Lean eliminates non-value added steps or waste from the process. (From Six Sigma Institute)
  
• Six Sigma improve quality of value add steps by reducing the variability in the process. (From Six Sigma Institute)
  

Filed under: Lean, Lean Six Sigma, Neville Clarke, Processes, Six Sigma References, Team Dynamics, Training

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18 Organizations Make it to The Global Six Sigma Awards Finals

WCBF has announced the shortlist of finalists for the 2007 Global Six Sigma Awards program. Listed by category, the following are the finalists for the 2007 Global Six Sigma Awards:

Best Achievement of Design for Six Sigma and Innovation, sponsored by Air AcademyAssociates
ATMI
Capital One Direct Banking
Raytheon Information Solutions

Best Achievement of Integrating Lean and Six Sigma
BMO Financial Group
Truman Medical Centers

Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Financial Services
BMO Financial Group
Capital One Direct Banking
Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation
OCBC Bank

Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Healthcare
Providence Health and Services
Truman Medical Centers
Valley Baptist Health System

Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Manufacturing
ATMI
Hexion Specialty Chemicals Inc
Lonmin Plc
PACCAR Inc

Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Outsourcing
Clayton State University Continuing Education
CONEXIS
WNS Global Services (P) Ltd

Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Sales & Marketing
Unisys
Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Service & Transactional Environments
BMO Financial Group
Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation
Firstsource Solutions Limited
OCBC Bank

Six Sigma VP of the Year Award
Aravind Immaneni, Vice President, Strategic Analysis & Improvement, Capital One Direct Banking
Leslie Behnke, Vice President, CIGNA Business Excellence, CIGNA
Dr Tomas Gonzalez MD, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Strategy and Six Sigma Quality, Valley Baptist Medical Center

The winners for all categories and for The Platinum Award for the Most Outstanding Organizational Achievement through Six Sigma, sponsored by Genpact will be announced at The Global Six Sigma Awards & Summit Gala Dinner on Wednesday October 24th 2007. The Gala Dinner is part of WCBF’s 2nd Annual Global Six Sigma Summit at The Rio All Suite Hotel, Las Vegas.

Congratulations!

Filed under: Awards, Finance, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Military, Six Sigma Organizations, Software/Technology

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How are your Black Belts Performing?

In your team, you will always have high-performing and low-performing individuals. Like a Six Sigma team, there are also high- and low- performing Black Belts, and usually you measure performance by the success of their projects.

While this may be true, project success can be attributed to so many factors. So, how do you assess the performance of your BBs or at the very least know if they have reached the peak of their performance?

Edoardo Monopoli and Arne Buthmann, writing for iSixSigma, outline a more comprehensive picture of Black Belt performance and its drivers.

The article starts with a definition of performance, which goes: Performance is the value added to the organization that the person and/or the group can give with reference to the achievement of organizationally relevant objectives.

Conducting a great data analysis during a Six Sigma project is only perceived as high performance behavior if the results of this analysis help achieve a project goal that at the same time contributes to the overall Six Sigma deployment objectives and the organization’s strategy.

On the “how” side, performance-driving behaviors can be seen in four major areas:

• Task performance
• Leadership performance
• Interpersonal performance
• Ethical performance

Read more…

Source:
iSixSigma: Reaching Excellence in Black Belt Performance

Filed under: Black Belt, Deployment, Team Dynamics

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On Six Sigma, Defects, and Quality

I’m sure you’ve heard about the massive product recalls of Chinese products. A few months ago, also, a US-based pharmaceutical company distributing formula milk in the country had recalled their milk products because of rusting tin cans and possibly contaminated milk.

In one of the Six Sigma meetings that I attended last time, I knew that that pharmaceutical company was into quality methods, and was going into Six Sigma. Yet, defective products find their way into the market.

As in the Peter’s Principle where anything that works will be used in progressively challenging applications until it causes a disaster, it tells us that it really pays to implement a wholistic quality management initiative.

I was talking to a friend last night, and he mentioned about how China can learn from Japan. There was an era that Japan’s products were deemed inferior. But Japan didn’t stay long in the dump. Its government started revolutionizing how they operate things as late as 1946 when the U.S. Occupation Force’s mission was to revive and restructure Japan’s communications equipment industry.

General Douglas MacArthur was committed to public education through radio. Homer Sarasohn was recruited to spearhead the effort by repairing and installing equipment, making materials and parts available, restarting factories, establishing the equipment test laboratory (ETL), and setting rigid quality standards for products (Tsurumi 1990). Sarasohn recommended individuals for company presidencies, like Koji Kobayashi of NEC, and he established education for Japan’s top executives in the management of quality. Furthermore, upon Sarasohn’s return to the United States, he recommended W. Edwards Deming to provide a seminar in Japan on statistical quality control (SQC).

Read more about the history of Japan’s quality movement.

W. Edwards Deming, an American statistician, college professor, author, and consultant, made his greatest quality impact in Japan. In fact, he’s often referred to as the man who brought quality to Japan. We learned from the Japanese how to do SQC, TQC, ISO, 5S, Ishikawa, Kaizen, Gemba and many more.

It’s not too late for China, although it’s going to be an arduous journey to quality for them. They just need to find their Deming.

*Photo from MorgueFile

Filed under: Deployment, Processes, W. Edwards Deming

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RealInnovation Speaks About Six Sigma and Innovation as Natural Partners

All the talk about Six Sigma and innovation, Real Innovation has the answer, too. The article emphasizes that innovation efforts should be incorporated into Six Sigma right at the beginning of any Six Sigma initiative.

How to do it?

While innovation is most visible at the point in a project when solution ideas are generated, the coupling with Six Sigma begins much earlier, at the fuzzy front end. Outlining roadmap connections and sharing some proven tips can help drive creativity Six Sigma projects.

Continue reading…

Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Deployment, Innovation

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Six Sigma Inspires Creativity at Starwood Hotels

There have been varying reactions to the claim that Six Sigma stifles creativity and therefore hinders innovation. My stand remains that Six Sigma can actually propel innovation but only when the the company and its Six Sigma team know how to leverage Six Sigma to their advantage.

The latest organization that attests to the successful combination of Six Sigma and innovation is the Starwood Hotels. An article over at BusinessWeek Online, Starwood group claims that Six Sigma doesn’t have to stifle creativity, instead it helps them develop profitable new programs for guests.

The Starwood group started adopting Six Sigma in 2006 with the Westin Chicago River North hotel’s Unwind project for the upscale hotel chain. In a survey, Westin found out that 34% of frequent travelers feel lonely away from home. To address this finding, the hotel launched a program that would come up with a set of nightly activities that would draw guests out of their rooms and into the lobby where they could meet, mingle, and develop a greater loyalty to the hotel group.

The results were amazing. Six Sigma inspires more creativity to the famous hotel chain as concepts are quickly carried out. Now, if Starwood can do it, why can’t the others?

Source:
BusinessWeek Online, an iSixSigma featured link

Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Deployment, Hotels, Innovation, Six Sigma Organizations, Starwood Hotels, iSixSigma

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