Fishbone Diagrams Cause and Effect of Wastage Events

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Root Cause Analysis of the Causes of Wastage Fishbone Diagram (Cause-and-Effect Diagram) A fishbone diagram, also commonly known as cause and effect diagram or Ishikawa diagram, is a graphical tool to identify the potential causes of a specific event. It was invented by Kaoru Ishikawa in the 1960s for the quality management processes in the Kawasaki shipyards. The causes are grouped into major categories (usually include People, Method, Material, Machine, Measurement and Environment) to identify the sources of variation (Wikipedia, 2014). The categories can also be modified according to the type of event or requirement. The fishbone diagram looks like the skeleton of a fish. Generally, it works from right to left, with each large “bone” of the fish branching out to include smaller bones, containing more details (TechTarget, 2014). The causes are usually derived from brainstorming sessions. This diagram is used as a quality tool and its application is widely used in all kinds of business including healthcare. Application of Fishbone Diagram to Analyze the High Wastage of RBC Units The fishbone diagram can be very useful in analyzing the problem and finding the root causes. For analysis of high wastage of RBC products, the causes were grouped into three main categories: Staffs, Methods and Management. The details of the analysis are discussed below: Evaluation of Staffs The laboratory staffs are the front-liners of any laboratory services. They handle and perform the tasks in everyday basis. Therefore, it is very essential to keep them well informed and aware of the problem. While analyzing the causes for the staffs, we learned that the staffs knew very less about the wastage of the products. In fact, they lacked the realizat... ... middle of paper ... ...save the unnecessary waste and cost due to expiration on the products. However, there is no formal procedure in the lab to use the website for exchanging products between other facilities. Only few staffs are aware about it and rarely used for posting the products. Therefore, the lab has not been able to implement the process yet, which actually has potential in saving expiring units. Moreover, the secondary lab does not have a procedure on generating report on expiring units. The report can be printed directly from LIS, which include the list of all of the upcoming expiring units. As a result, the staffs can easily monitor and transfer the products to the main lab in a timely manner. Lack of procedure has led the staffs unaware of this process, hence, resulting in failing to meet the criteria of transferring the units to the main lab five days prior to expiration.

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