Problem Statement Definition
Virginia Mason Medical Center is a medical center located in Seattle, Washington. After a period of being unprofitable and declining morale amongst the staff there they tried to implement TQM and Six Sigma with limited results. During a chance encounter between a VMMC executive and a Boeing executive, VMMC was introduced to the Toyota Production System, TPS, which focused on eliminating waste, or the waste of overproduction, time, material, space, movement, and excess inventory. The TPS system adopted by VMMC became known as the Virginia Medical Production System, or VMPS. VMPS proved to be very successful within VMMC, cutting costs and improving quality in many areas of their operations. They found however that there were still many within the organization were not on board with the system, some based on their previous experience with TQM. Changing over to a system developed for manufacturing automobiles to work in a healthcare system became was the big challenge facing VMMC.
Situation Analysis
In 1998 and 1999 VMMC lost money for the first time in its existence. They were also faced with morale issues amongst their staff and formidable competition from other hospitals in their area. Dr. Gary Kaplan the CEO of VMMC was looking for a tool to implement a strategy that would address the challenges they were facing. After trying and dismissing QCM and looking at Six Sigma, a chance encounter led them to the Toyota Production System, TPS, a management method that focused on quality and efficiency.
TPS is based on the concept of Heijunka, evening out production to meet the fluctuations of demand and eliminating unnecessary inventory. Heijunka focused on eliminating waste, as it related to overproducti...
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...not have faith in the VMPS and thought that a system used for the production of automobiles could not be used in healthcare. There were still errors occurring as well, such as medications being mixed up that resulted in catastrophe. VMMC must continue with improving their system including further leadership development and education, aligning expectations of all of their staff members, holding everyone accountable, encouraging everyone to be on the front line of quality control and to be vocal with their ideas about improving the quality of the system. The “buddy system” that was initiated after the mix up of medications is a good example of continuing improvements to their system. If VMMC continues on their path towards achieving their lean management system, they will reach their goal of becoming the leader in quality lean management that they are striving to be.
SGH has been plagued with patient quality issues, therefore SGH finds itself in a situation which is inherently antithetical to the mission of the hospital. The costs of healthcare continue to rise at an alarming rate, and hospital boards are experiencing increased scrutiny in their ability, and role, in ensuring patient quality (Millar, Freeman, & Mannion, 2015). Many internal actors are involved in patient quality, from the physicians, nurses, pharmacists and IT administrators, creating a complex internal system. When IT projects, such as the CPOE initiative fail, the project team members, and the organization as a whole, may experience negative emotions that impede the ability to learn from the experience (Shepherd, Patzelt, & Wolfe, 2011). The SGH executive management team must refocus the organization on the primary goal of patient
To develop a strategy for WMC’s Detroit plant that is no longer viable because of underinvestment, labor issues and product-process mismatch. This has lead to negative return on assets, high burden rate (6.00) and low sales figures. The report investigates the issues causing the situation. A recommendation to address the Detroit plant will be made based on the findings.
Kuiper Leda lacks an effective Inventory Management to handle properly the increase in demand of stock and production. An inventory management plan would be capable of forecasting errors in production, client-required service levels, total lead time in manufacturing a unit or batch of the product, and demand priorities. Inventory control is a challenge currently because of the size of Midland Motor's order. In order to meet the demand the company needs to increase the inventory which increases the inventory costs. KL have an opportunity of using the Just - In - Time method of inventory control which eliminates waste by making the resources and labor available only in the time and amount required. It will help increase productivity, product quality and work performance while saving inventory costs for the company. (Curtin, 2008). Kuiper Leda also needs to keep in mind that they will still have to fill orders from other clients that have previously placed orders or even new customers.
"The problems, issues, and opportunities in organizations are not about reducing defects; they are about responding to new opportunities, using the voice of the customer knowledge," said O'Dell. "With both Six Sigma and KM, I’m telling you that you’re going to get more of what you want - if you begin to open the conversation to a different way of thinking about solving some of these problems over the long term. Because both Six Sigma and KM have tremendous power, they also have some issues that they need help with."
national Bill of Rights. He was a planter from Virginia, had grown up rich on
As we examining a case study about MDCM, which being largest Contract Manufacturer for Medical devices is suffering from financial loss of $ 33 Million for consecutive Quarter in 2002. CEO McMullen has taken over the command since last 2 years. His strategies to work on operation and cost improvements have not been effective, so far. He still has a year ahead to implement and make improvements in his plan.
It is no secret that risk is prevalent in the healthcare industry. Healthcare organizations carry a large amount of risk just in their daily operations. Healthcare organizations not only have to worry about risks to their patients, but their staff, financial stability, or even a natural disaster. A healthc organization must have a risk management department with trained and qualified individuals that know how to handle various issues within the organization. At Janssen, they have a lot of risk when it comes to their product. They have compliance laws that must be meticulously followed to prevent severe punishments such as multi-million dollar lawsuits or imprisonment from criminal convictions. They must promote their products lawfully and keep them regulated by the FDA and keep medical decision making free from improper industry influence. To go along side with risk management, quality management also plays a vital role within a healthcare organization. Quality management oversees the quality of the services the organization provides as well as the products it may sell. With pharmaceuticals, the quality must be consistent and how Janssen maintains this quality must be overseen. Quality control is an important factor for them. Controlling all of the various elements within their production and also the satisfaction of their consumers plays a vital role for continual success.
To make up for the lack of resources, technology, and capital goods, Toyota was forced to initiate major changes in corporate culture and their supply chain, called the Toyota Production System (TPS) (Vanguard, 2016). The plan took decades to implement company-wide. Employees were given more responsibility for the entire manufacturing process. Every individual was held accountable for the product’s quality. A sense of pride was instilled in the employees from the top down. According to Jinichiro Nakane (2002), Taiichi Ohno inspired a “quest for a superior performance culture” in Toyota. Managers and laborers were taught to take pride in their work and were given the authority to fix inefficiencies and eliminate “muda”, or waste in English, as soon as it was
The VA and MTF felt they needed to make the change with emphasizing team-based care. The VA provides care to approximately 8 million beneficiaries with 5.2 of the beneficiaries receiving primary care services. Between 2009 and 2011 there has been 1,000 primary care practices converted to the PCHM model. During that time the VA experienced a 4% decrease in hospitalization. At one of the MTF’s in San Antonio the emergency room saw a 14 percent of reduction in use of emergency room and urgent care. In all the those cases, the physicians leaded the health care team but ancillary services all played their part from case management to admin services it was all in team
Describe the contribution of key performance improvement theories; i.e., i.e., Lean Six Sigma, TQM, etc. to the performance improvement process, and discuss how they may impact improvement in today’s healthcare institutions.
It’s very difficult to blame someone when mistakes occur in an environment in which we hope learning and improvement will take place. But eventually someone has to take blame for the mistake. Errors can occur anywhere but when it comes to the healthcare field there are more possibilities.It would include acute care, ambulatory care, outpatient clinics, pharmacies, and patient homes. Many people assume that medical errors involve only wrong medications administered or the wrong surgery performed (Dovey, Kuzel, Phillips, and Woolf, 2004). However, there are many other types of errors such as wrong diagnosis, equipment failure; sometimes patients are given the wrong blood (Dovey, Kuzel, Phillips, and Woolf, 2004). As much as the healthcare employees try to prevent medical errors, they still can happen. It is necessary to recognize the medical error in order to provide proper care to the patient, report the error and then take an action to prevent the error from happening again (Dovey, Kuzel, Phillips, and Woolf, 2004).
12). HSC Pediatric Center, like many other hospitals in this country, have been slow to change. According to Hines (2004), “this slow change has been due to operational Improvement efforts have been stymied by lack of automation, inaccurate data, poor business intelligence and reporting” (pg. 19). Due to this high cost in supply-demand HSC wanted to introduce new ways to manage wasted supplies. Our hospital assumed that the medical supplies were being utilized more than they actually were. When our hospitals data is collected this was not the case. HSC was ordering more supplies thinking that that current supply had run out. Unknowingly, theses supplies were tucked away in closets, under patient cribs and in other places where inventory is not accurate. Two suggestions were implemented to combat this ongoing issue; the use of electronic id tags for larger devices and the implementation of the Omnicell to house other
Another important factor that is essential for a company to succeed is to control inventory efficiency in order to avoid any extra costs, such as holding costs and to also decrease the amount of defects in goods. Companies can control the inventory by...
The stakeholders who had influence over whether or not the issue is dealt with were the quality control supervisor and the Chief Financial Officer (CFO). The quality control supervisor’s main concern is testing as many units as possible in the shortest possible time. As a result, the quality control supervisor would not accord with new procedures that would increase the amount of time r...
Good leadership, fostering a culture of change and safety, team work are essential in implementing quality improvement and risk management in the organization. Leaders and the governing body must demonstrate commitment to the processes and define their expectations for all stakeholders. Leadership team should make sure that the team’s attention is focused on the core business of the organization, which is to provide care and treat patients in a safe and high quality clinical environment. There are different tools that can be used for quality improvement that also applies to analyzing risk issues. These are measurement of quality, benchmarking, RCA, FMECA, and so