Details of Synopsis
Name and Address of the candidate:
Shreeranga Bhat, Lecturer,
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, St. Joseph Engineering College, Mangalore – 5750 028,
Karnataka, India.
Email: shreeranga1981@yahoo.com Mobile: 9480047532
Name and Address of the Guide:
Dr. N.A.Jnanesh,
Principal & Head (Mechanical),
KVG College of Engineering, Sullia – 574 327. Karnataka, India.
Email: jnanesh_na@yahoo.com Mobile: 9448153007
Name and Address of the Co-Guide:
Dr. H. Nagaprasad, Professor, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Malnad College of Enginering, Hassan -573 201.
Karnataka, India.
Email: naga_hsn@rediffmail.com Mobile: 9880466166
Research center:
Department of Mechanical Engineering
KVG College of Engineering, Sullia – 574 327. Karnataka, India.
Year of registration:
SYNOPSIS
Title of the proposed research work:
A STUDY ON IMPLEMENTATION OF LEAN SIX SIGMA
STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE THE PERFORMANCE OF A
SERVICE SECTOR (HOSPITAL)
Guide: DR. N.A.JNANESH Co-guide: DR. H. NAGAPRASAD
1.
Introduction:
In a market characterized by a dramatic shift from goods to services, staying in business and, more importantly achieving high performance is challenging. Corporate leaders face unpredictable and chaotic markets. Market demand, products, technology, competitive behavior, sources of relative advantage and political conditions change violently. Indian Industries must also prepare to face the challenges from the MNC’s with their massive strength.
That is, to become market leader, companies must focus on eliminating process variation of its scare resources and to reduce cycle time to increase productivity. Companies are facing rapidly changing customer expectations, escalating costs and emerging new markets, which are all impacting process efficiency.
From past several years six sigma is been used for reducing defects and producing measurable financial results. It stresses to perform the things in a right way in order to achieve defect free system. It has long been associated with Lean manufacturing. Lean is an approach that seeks to improve flow in the value stream and eliminate waste. It is about doing things quickly.
principles of Lean with the best practices of Six Sigma. The result is a methodology that serves to improve processes, eliminate product or process defects and to reduce cycle times and accelerate processes [1].
2.
Literature Review:
Lean principles basically had been developed on the work of two Industrial Engineers of Toyota, Frederick Taylor and W. Edwards Deming in the 1950’s. It was further enhanced and developed by Toyota to create the Toyota Production System.
Six Sigma is a process improvement methodology developed at Motorola in the 1980’s to reduce defects in its processes. Its goal was to achieve a level of performance equal to a defect rate of 3.4 defects per million opportunities – which is virtually a defect free environment i.e. Six Sigma performance. Consequently, Motorola Inc. Six Sigma methodology emerged in the 1980s as a Total Quality Management tool.
A combination of Lean and Six Sigma provides an overall improvement philosophy that incorporates powerful data-driven tools to solve problems and create rapid transformational improvement at lower cost. The key is to find the optimal combination of both approaches. For example, adopting the Lean idea of focusing on what adds value and then using Six Sigma tools to help, understand and reduce variation [2-3].
3.
Significance of Lean Six Sigma in service sector:
Quality management became imperative for the manufacturing sector in the 1970s and 1980s, for service organizations in the 1980s and 1990s, and, finally, for the healthcare industry in the 1990 onwards. Today, there is ever growing demand for improved public service delivery especially in healthcare. Lean Six Sigma for Services is a business improvement methodology that maximizes share holder value by achieving the fastest rate of improvement in
Customer Satisfaction, Cost,
Quality,
Process Speed, and Invested Capital
The healthcare industry is facing increasing pressure not only to increase quality, but also to reduce costs. Some of the wastes in hospitals are:
Motion––this involves movement of people and/or equipments that does not add value to the patient (customer) experience.
Waiting––this is the idle time created in the processes when people, information, equipments or materials are not at hand or being worked on. For example, waiting for procedures, surgeries/reports, etc.
Uncertainity ––this is when people doing the work are not confident about the way to perform the tasks.
Defects––this include erroraneous work that lacks value. For example, medication errors, rework, variation of outcomes and surgical errors.
Processing ––this include the activities in the processes of the healthcare delivery that do not add value from the patients perspective such as clarifying orders, missing medications.
Over Production––this includes redundant work and examples include duplicate work, charting, and multiple forms with same information [4-8].
4.
Scope and Significance of this research:
awareness is also grown significantly. People have become more quality conscious. Only those who provide quick, safe and quality health service will survive in the long run. In this context, the adoption of Quality Improvement Programmes has become the need of the hour and there is an urgency to address these issues immediately.
From the literature review it is observed that the research going on in the field of Lean Six Sigma in Indian hospitals is very limited. Hence, it is decided to carry out a study on the possibility of the implementation of Lean Six Sigma principles in a major hospital of Mangalore. The Hospital is already identified and it is a 500 bed multi-disciplinary super speciality hospital.
5.
Methodology:
The Lean Six Sigma Methodology [4] will be utilized for this investigation as given below:
Define a problem, set a goal striving for customer satisfaction and aligning
business objectives.
Measure the process by collecting relevant data to realize issues and for future
comparison.
Analyze to verify connection and cause of problems.
Improve or the process by reducing variation, based upon the analysis. Control the process and maintain the reduction of variation.
6.
Conclusion:
Lean Six Sigma incorporates Lean’s principles of speed & immediate action in to the Six Sigma improvement process itself, increasing the velocity of improvement projects & hence results.
It also incorporates the Six Sigma view of the evils of variation, and reduces its impact on queue times. Finally Lean Six Sigma uniquely attacks the hidden costs of complexity of service sector. Therefore in this proposed work the new concept of Lean Six Sigma will be used to implement it in a service sector.
7.
References:
[1]. Bahensky A.J., Roe J. and Bolton R., “Lean Sigma – Will It Work for
Healthcare?”, Journal of Healthcare Information Management, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 39
[2] www.institute.nhs.uk
[3] Nonthaleerak P. and Hendry L.C., “Six Sigma: literature review and key future
research areas”, International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage,
Volume 2, Number 2 / 2006, pp. 105 – 161
[4] Rodger L. N., “Lean Sigma Healthcare System: A Performance Strategy for World
Class Healthcare Delivery in Zambia”, Paper presented at MoH HR for Health
Research Conf.
[5] Woodward H., El-Harit J., et.al, “All Bundled Out” - Application of Lean Six
Sigma techniques to reduce workload impact during implementation of patient care bundles within critical care – A case study”, Proceedings of the Spring 2007
American Society for Engineering Education Illinois-Indiana Section Conference, paper 59.
[6] McLaughlin D.B. and Hays J.M., “Quality Management: “Focus on Six Sigma”, Healthcare Operations Management, Health Administration Press publication, 2008 [7] Hilton R., Balla M. and Sohal A.S., “Factors critical to the success of a Six-Sigma
quality program in an Australian hospital”, Total Quality Management & Business
Excellence, Volume 19, Issue9, September 2008, pp. 887 - 902
[8] Heuvel J.V.N., Ronald J.M.M. and Verver J.P.S., “Six Sigma in healthcare:
lessons learned from a hospital”, International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive
Advantage, Vol. 1, No. 4, 2005.
