MANILA, 15 June 2018 — Businesses have been using Six Sigma and specifically Lean techniques to reduce costs and improve quality, among others. In fact, Six Sigma benefits not just the manufacturing and outsourcing industries but even the healthcare sector as well.
By identifying and removing causes of defects, and minimizing wastes in the entire processes, Six Sigma improves output quality. Hence, businesses make decisions based on verifiable data and statistics, instead of assumptions and guesswork.
It follows a defined sequence of steps, with specific value targets. These include reducing process cycle time, pollution, and costs, while increasing customer satisfaction and profits.
Companies use Six Sigma to grow, innovate, and efficiently transform their businesses.
Primarily, it gives businesses continuously stable and positive results. Hence, business owners can define, measure, analyze, improve, and control their operational processes.
More importantly, it emphasizes strong and passionate leadership and support from the top management.
With healthcare having zero tolerance for mistakes, Six Sigma is a nice fit. It greatly helps reduce medical errors and ensures compliance.
Healthcare businesses that have benefited from Six Sigma and Lean include Aetna, Baxter, GE Healthcare, GlaxoSmithKline, and Merck.
Others that benefited include Canadian Medical Laboratories, Catalent Pharma Solutions, Healthcare Financial Management Association, and Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital.
Meanwhile, Akron Children’s Hospital has used the Six Sigma Kaizen process, focusing on continuous improvement.
By improving inefficiencies in the floor’s original design and delays in daily operations, and creating a new layout using Lean processes, it was able to reduce office sizes and add more patient rooms.
Canton-Potsdam Hospital incorporated Lean Six Sigma to reduce food waste, streamline the process of transporting meal trays to patients, redesign the scheduling process for total joint replacements, trim the time to access safe patient handling equipment, and improve the way that hospital enters digital patient information.
