Process Improvement Advice & Best Practices
How a Value Stream Analysis Can Help You Elminate Non-Value Adding Activities
Below is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of our recently published book, Performance Improvement for Healthcare: Leading Change with Lean, Six Sigma, and Constraints Management
A Process-level VSA, or ProcessVSA, is an approach to analyzing a process to identify and eliminate non-value adding activities as well as to develop procedures to manage bottlenecks effectively and break these bottlenecks when needed. For lean six sigma in healthcare, it is also a planning tool that uses process mapping to help understand how material and information flow through a process, as well as to identify constraints at the process level. Additionally, ideal and future state process maps are developed that focus future improvement activities within that process. ProcessVSAs are conducted by following a product’s or service’s path from suppliers to customers. Once the current state of the process is mapped, it is then analyzed to identify waste, inefficiencies, constraints, and other improvement opportunities. After areas of opportunity have been identified, an ideal state map is created to serve as a benchmark. Then a future state map is created showing how the material and information should flow and how the process bottleneck should be managed, if there is one. Champions are designated to sponsor improvement efforts by first determining the best approach. Finally, an action plan is prepared to move from the current state to the future state of the process. This action plan should include recommendations for future rapid improvement events, quick hits, and DMAIC and Constraints Management projects.
A ProcessVSA generally is run as a single event lasting five days or less. There are three phases to this process: pre-event, event and post-event. Each phase has a series of sequential steps to complete for a successful outcome. Figure 6.2 shows the ProcessVSA pre-event roadmap.
Figure 6.2 ProcessVSA pre-event roadmap
Click here for a free download of Chapter 1 of our book, Performance Improvement for Healthcare: Leading Change with Lean, Six Sigma, and Constraints Management.
