The Right Tool for the Job
The Right Tool for the Job
A quality improvement team learned to use the right lean tool instead of the wrong Six Sigma tools
- Publication:
- Quality Progress
- Date:
- December 2021
- Issue:
- Volume 54 Issue 12
- Pages:
- pp. 74-79
- Author(s):
- Chapman, Christopher D.
- Organization(s):
- Chapman Lean Enterprise, Westfield, IN
Abstract
An acute care medical facility in the Midwest made goals to reduce waste and improve care but erroneously selected Six Sigma principles for accomplishing those goals. This was due to a misunderstanding of how to quantify value in the facility's processes. Six Sigma tools, while useful in many ways for understanding how to incrementally improve processes at the facility, kept the main value improvement opportunity—total patient time spent—hidden. The lean value stream map approach looks at a process as a complete timeline and would have been the better choice.
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