Operational Improvement Tips for Your Small to Mid-Sized Company
For my birthday a friend gave me a pair of gloves for surviving these rough Midwest winters where I live. They are beautiful, and very much appreciated. Inside the gloves, however, is a small tag that reads, “One size fits all.” Trying them on proved that claim to be a bit of false advertising! Thankfully my friend didn’t mind making a quick exchange for me, and now I am set for the next snow season months away. The incident made me think, though, about companies that try to adopt the “one size fits all” mentality, especially when it comes to improving business processes. Implementing process improvement programs such as Lean and Six Sigma can sometimes feel like a glove that doesn’t fit right. There are ways, though, to deploy data-driven tools like Lean and Six Sigma for smaller and mid-sized organizations that doesn’t require the massive all-or-nothing approach. It allows them to implement at a slower, more manageable pace. The strategy and projects are directly aligned to the organization’s strategic plan and customer needs. As a result, they often are more successful in achieving business improvements quickly, and on a grander scale, than their larger counterparts. Even if you are a biotech or pharma start-up or a not-for-profit with 5 or less employees, you can benefit from taking a data-driven approach to your business operations. How can I use data to be smarter about my financial projections? How should the start-up prepare itself for growth? What must be done to meet the milestones established by the investors (market)? How does a company know if it can achieve its goals? Are resources appropriately applied; is this the best ROI that can be expected? What risks must be addressed immediately? Sometimes small to mid-sized organizations don’t realize that their size actually puts them at an advantage in the market, if they can just harness their data to make smart business decisions. If you run a small to mid-sized organization, what has been your experience with operational improvement initiatives? I’d love to hear your story! If you have a business process that needs a “check-up,” please email me! I’d love to help you get back to a healthy, productive...
Read MoreRx for Your Workplace Pain
Recently, I made an appointment to see my doctor for a slight pain. It had been annoying me for awhile. But like most men, I put off doing anything about it. I was amazed at how quickly my doctor diagnosed the root cause of the pain. He helped me make some changes in my activities so that the pain went away — for good. I feel like a new man! Why did I wait so long to get it checked out?? The experience made me think about “pain” in the workplace. How often do we experience the frustration of roadblocks, bottlenecks, costly delays and waste from inefficient work processes. Yet we put off asking the obvious question – “Why are we doing it this way??” Or we complain, but never take action. What is the most annoying pain point for you at your workplace? If a process is a pain for you, it likely is for others too. The good news is that you are uniquely positioned to bring relief! The best people to identify the pain points in a business process are the team members themselves. You and your colleagues experience the inputs, outputs, activities and decisions associated with the process every day. This is your opportunity to be a hero at work! Take the next step. Pull together a group of co-workers who are intimately involved in accessing or running the process. (Buy pizza for lunch – they will come!) Map out how the process works (or doesn’t). Collect enough data to know how big the problem is. See what the data tell you; identify the root cause(s). Brainstorm solutions with the group. Develop and try an improvement idea. Gather more data. Adjust the process, as needed. Share the updated process with those who need to know. Celebrate — you just eliminated a major headache for your team! If time is an issue, get help. Just as my doctor diagnosed and treated my physical pain, a process improvement expert can help you analyze and fix organizational “pain,” through the use of various tool sets, including Lean and Six Sigma. We can facilitate sessions for your team; help organize, collect and analyze data; and coach the team as you work through improvement ideas and sustainable implementation plans. If you have a business process that needs a “check-up,” email me! I’d love to help you get back to a healthy, productive workplace! ...
Read MoreYou Can Challenge the Status Quo in Your Health Care Organization
In my work with health care organizations, it’s common to find inefficient, costly processes exist everywhere, simply because no one has ever taken the time to question the status quo. Charleston Area Medical Center (CAMC) Health System in West Virginia shares a great case study in the Feb. 1, 2016 issue of the American Journal of Health System Pharmacy about how they greatly reduced drug costs by using Lean and Six Sigma tools to improve their batching i.v. medications process. The four-hospital system centralized its pharmacy compounding system in 2007 to increase efficiency. To “batch” i.v. medications, the staff would prepare a certain number of sterile i.v. products a day in certain amounts, then deliver them to the nursing units for administration to patients. While staff perceived that centralization was a vast improvement, they found with a little data collection that the medication-use process for i.v. compound making remained less than ideal. The i.v. bags filled and sent to the nursing stations in the morning often were not needed in the afternoon. A lot of waste in the process was undetected. When asked why the i.v. medication carts were only filled once a day, staff replied that it was simply “the way we’ve always done it.” There was no metrics or reasoning behind it that anyone could remember. After reviewing medication orders and administration times and zeroing in on when waste occurred, the pharmacy staff switched from fill the carts once a day to filling them five times a day. Intuitively, you might think that filling the carts more often would be more costly. In fact, the process change saved them $134,000 annually, exceeding a target of a 50% reduction. These are just a few of the ways that CAMC Health System and its pharmacy team challenged “the way we’ve always done it.” It seems very fitting that their refreshing approach earned them the coveted 2015 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for health care – another rigorous system for improving an organization’s processes.re are four tips to help you challenge the status quo at your organization: Invite different perspectives. As a leader, encourage different perspectives to examine the a long-standing process – particularly those that are closest to the work. Ask questions. Lots of them. When a staff member brings up an issue with the current status quo, use this as an opportunity to be curious and ask questions. Why has it always been done that way, and what would he/she do differently? Embrace the “d” word. “D” as in data. Gather some data and see what it shows you. Be willing to experiment. Try a solution on for size. But just like CAMC, be open to making a change if it doesn’t...
Read MoreJump Start Your Not-for-Profit’s Creativity with Six Sigma
In my work with not-for-profits, it’s a common misperception that Six Sigma tools stifle the creativity needed to be successful in the not-for-profit world. On top of that, leaders fear that the rigorous data analysis just isn’t practical for a team of dedicated employees who are already wearing too many hats. How can we achieve our mission if we’re mired in metrics? We can’t possibly be responsive to the needs of our communities and clients. I was encouraged to read the Jan. 2016 ASQ posting about the work of Jorge Perez, vice president of youth development, family enrichment, and social responsibility for Y-USA. He realized that one of the YMCA’s main community programs (and money raisers) had become stale – the summer day camp that many of us remember fondly from our youth! Attendance and interest in the program had dropped off. Something had to be done. Prior to Perez introducing Six Sigma training at Y-USA, a program upgrade was typically the result of several staff members getting together to simply revamp what was already in place. But rather than overhauling existing plans, the project team used Six Sigma tools to discover that the learning environment created for the children was the primary component that was lacking in delivering high-quality day camp experiences. They completely retooled the program around three factors identified as necessary for improving the day camp experience – building a sense of achievement, creating a feeling of belonging, and encouraging relationships among day camp participants. The re-invigorated program has been a huge success. Now, camp staff focus on making sure that every kid learns something new, makes a new friend, and forms a connection with the Y — every single day. Perez commented that, in the past, staff made decisions with a combination of instinct and data that suited their argument rather than using data to drive toward a solution. But that’s no longer the case. “The fact that we came up with a day camp solution that no one was thinking about was exactly what we needed to do.” Creativity takes courage — the courage to be disciplined, to ask the right questions, and to gather the right data before brainstorming about new possibilities. What programs are a little stale at your not-for-profit? Are you up for the challenge? ...
Read MoreTwo Keys to Successful Business Collaborations
From my experience as a six sigma consultant, consistency and standardization can make or break the success of a business collaboration or merger. They’re not very glamorous, but they make a world of difference. I was pleased to hear about the recent Lean Six Sigma successes of Indiana’s Pulaski Memorial Hospital when it partnered with a rural health clinic and Purdue Healthcare Advisors. At first, each organization’s different ways of working seemed to be insurmountable in this new collaborative. But gradually, by standardizing processes and being consistent, patient registration wait time dropped from 6 to 4.5 minutes on average; wait times in the diagnostic lab dropped from 19 to 5.8 minutes average; and precertification errors went from 36 down to 2 during the revenue cycle. Patient satisfactionrose from an average of 71% to almost 90%. They’ve since expanded their improvement efforts to diagnostic testing orders involving ultrasounds and mammograms. It’s encouraging to hear about organizations that have rolled up their sleeves to do this essential, albeit unglamorous...
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