Moving Beyond Repair:: Perfecting Health Care

Moving Beyond Repair:: Perfecting Health Care Review

The Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) is one of the nation's first regional collaboratives of medical, business, and civic leaders organized to address healthcare safety and quality improvement. Its core mission is to show that an unwavering focus on meeting patient needs and achieving optimal care outcomes, along with simultaneous dedication to efficiency and zero defects, will create maximum value for the patient and for society. During the past decade, PRHI has proven again and again that dramatic achievements are possible by applying basic quality improvement methods common to other industries. PRHI developed its own process improvement methodology called Perfecting Patient Care based on industrial engineering principles articulated by W. Edwards Deming, applied early as the Toyota Production System and later known as Lean manufacturing. MOVING BEYOND REPAIR: PERFECTING HEALTH CARE will demonstrate the value of these quality improvement methods not only in solving specific problems, but in supporting both organizational transformation and system redesign.

The Definitive Guide to Emergency Department Operational Improvement: Employing Lean Principles with Current ED Best Practices to Create the "No Wait" Department

The Definitive Guide to Emergency Department Operational Improvement: Employing Lean Principles with Current ED Best Practices to Create the "No Wait" Department Review

In a unique and integrated approach, The Definitive Guide to Emergency Department Operational Improvement: Employing Lean Principles with Current ED Best Practices to Create the "No Wait" Department exposes you to the academics behind managing the complex service environment that is the ED. The book combines applied management science and ED experience to create a model of how to improve your emergency department operations.

After summarizing the current state of emergency medicine, the book offers an in-depth presentation of Lean tools used in the ED along with basic and advanced flow principles grounded in queuing theory and the theory of constraints. It then shows how these concepts are applied in the emergency department and why they work, supported by a comprehensive case study in which Lean principles were used to transform an underperforming ED into a world-class operation.

The authors highlight three commonly referenced intervals in the ED: door to doc (input), doc to disposition (throughput), and disposition to departure (output). After reviewing best practices, the authors explain how to achieve excellence in your own environment by discussing change management, leadership, dealing with resistance, and other critical elements of creating a culture of change. Under any scenario realized by healthcare reform, this book provides the tools and concepts to improve your ED for patients, staff, the organization, and ultimately, society.

The Ultimate Improvement Cycle: Maximizing Profits through the Integration of Lean, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints

The Ultimate Improvement Cycle: Maximizing Profits through the Integration of Lean, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints Review

Recognizing the need to implement quality and eliminate waste, companies embrace Lean, Six Sigma, or a combination of the two, typically taking a broad approach that seeks to remediate every process, critical or not. When this happens, efforts become distracted, improvements indefinitely delayed, and results mediocre at best.

The Ultimate Improvement Cycle (UIC) integrates Lean, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints into a combined strategy that will help you immediately focus your efforts on those areas that will make the greatest difference. The book presents basic laws of factory physics that show why the UIC delivers significant bottom-line improvement while other initiatives so often fail. It explains to you why focusing your efforts on apparent problems rather than systemic concerns is wasted effort.

Focus on key areas and take improvement to the next level

The Ultimate Improvement Cycle: Maximizing Profits through the Integration of Lean, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints show you how to draw the best from Lean and Six Sigma by employing principles drawn from the Theory of Constraints. This approach will ensure that your effort is focused in the right place, at the right time, using the right tools, and the right amount of resources. This multi-pronged approach addresses cost accounting, variation, waste, and performance measurements. But most importantly, it focuses your organization on the right areas to optimize.

Applying years of hands-on work in many environments, Bob Sproull has developed a unique proven method that capitalizes on a time-release formula for evoking the key tools that improvement requires. He shows you how to take advantage of the cyclical nature of improvement to implement change that is perpetually effective, and his approach does not require more resources than you have on hand. Although originally developed in manufacturing, the UIC works equally well in any environment whether it be manufacturing or service-oriented, including Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) and Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM).

Effective FMEAs: Achieving Safe, Reliable, and Economical Products and Processes using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (Quality and Reliability Engineering Series)

Effective FMEAs: Achieving Safe, Reliable, and Economical Products and Processes using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (Quality and Reliability Engineering Series) Review

Outlines the correct procedures for doing FMEAs and how to successfully apply them in design, development, manufacturing, and service applications

There are a myriad of quality and reliability tools available to corporations worldwide, but the one that shows up consistently in company after company is Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Effective FMEAs takes the best practices from hundreds of companies and thousands of FMEA applications and presents streamlined procedures for veteran FMEA practitioners, novices, and everyone in between.

Written from an applications viewpoint—with many examples, detailed case studies, study problems, and tips included—the book covers the most common types of FMEAs, including System FMEAs, Design FMEAs, Process FMEAs, Maintenance FMEAs, Software FMEAs, and others. It also presents chapters on Fault Tree Analysis, Design Review Based on Failure Mode (DRBFM), Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM), Hazard Analysis, and FMECA (which adds criticality analysis to FMEA).

With extensive study problems and a companion Solutions Manual, this book is an ideal resource for academic curricula, as well as for applications in industry. In addition, Effective FMEAs covers:

• The basics of FMEAs and risk assessment

• How to apply key factors for effective FMEAs and prevent the most common errors

• What is needed to provide excellent FMEA facilitation

• Implementing a "best practice" FMEA process

Everyone wants to support the accomplishment of safe and trouble-free products and processes while generating happy and loyal customers. This book will show readers how to use FMEA to anticipate and prevent problems, reduce costs, shorten product development times, and achieve safe and highly reliable products and processes.

High Performance Through Process Excellence: From Strategy to Operations

High Performance Through Process Excellence: From Strategy to Operations Review

Continuously changing customer and market requirements have become a dominating factor in today’s global business environment. Enterprises have to take smart decisions and execute fast. Innovation and agility become key success factors. Process excellence is the glue that brings everything together.

The Management of Process Excellence (MPE) has become a main enabler of High Performance. It leads to a functioning "Real-Time Enterprise". MPE links strategy with people and technology, like Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) or Web 2.0. Knowledge assets, such as Process Reference Models, increase productivity. Emergent Processes and Inter-enterprise Collaboration are addressed specifically. MPE delivers Process Governance for large organizations as well as for small and medium enterprises.

The book addresses executives and managers as well as educators and students.

Business Process Documentation (R.O.C.K. ItTM Methodology)

Business Process Documentation (R.O.C.K. ItTM Methodology) Review

This Micro-book is a very practical guide to creating business process documentation. It is written for someone who needs to document their processes, but doesn’t want to do it for a living. It combines clearly defined steps with useful tips that will help you ensure both high quality and quickly completed process documentation. Because it is written for a beginner, all of the templates and tools provided in the book use common, widely available software. Business Process Documentation can add value to any business, but is usually neglected. Generally, people feel like it will be too much trouble to put together and maintain the documentation. Step-by-Step Guide to Business Process Documentation will help you get the documentation done in short order so that you can move onto the more exciting aspects of your business.

Software Process Improvement for Small and Medium Enterprises: Techniques and Case Studies (Premier Reference Source)

Software Process Improvement for Small and Medium Enterprises: Techniques and Case Studies (Premier Reference Source) Review

Software engineering is of major importance to all enterprises; however, the key areas of software quality and software process improvement standards and models are currently geared toward large organizations, where most software organizations are small and medium enterprises.

Software Process Improvement for Small and Medium Enterprises: Techniques and Case Studies offers practical and useful guidelines, models, and techniques for improving software processes and products for small and medium enterprises, utilizing the authoritative, demonstrative tools of case studies and lessons learned to provide academics, scholars, and practitioners with an invaluable research source.

Cultural Kaizen: The story of how simple concepts can transform an organizations culture, engagement and bottom-line.

Cultural Kaizen: The story of how simple concepts can transform an organizations culture, engagement and bottom-line. Review

Cultural Kaizen™ is a business novel that focuses on the lean transformation of a process manufacturing site and subsequent cultural impact of the transformation on the people who work there. The book’s introductory chapters focus on an operations manager’s personal struggle while working at a site that has a severely negative culture. The site is undergoing a ‘fake lean’ transformation (Focused on the tools; not the business process). The first two chapters demonstrate the effects of a negative culture on an employee. The operations manager is offered a new position as the plant manager of a ‘broken’ chemical plant. This is a large step for the new plant manager, but he agrees because he will do anything to get out of the negative cultural situation he is currently experiencing. The plant manager arrives on site and determines that a lean transformation is what the site needs to improve their performance. The plant manager uses his previous experiences as an example of “What not to do?” Above all else, he anchors the transformation with a respect for people. The respect for people was the keystone item missing in his previous role. The book continues to document the trials and tribulations of the plant leading up through the conclusion of their first kaizen event and ending with a gemba walk one year later. The major themes explored in the book are: • A focus on the role of the front-line associate and a respect for their position • The effects of a negative culture on team members vs. a positive culture • The process of running a kaizen event, in a process manufacturing site, with a focus on the social and emotional effects that is above and beyond the mechanics of the kaizen process. • Mass production systems vs. lean production systems and their effect on the organizational culture

The Illustrated Toyota Production System: A Process Improvement Methodology

The Illustrated Toyota Production System: A Process Improvement Methodology Review

The Toyota Production System has been studied by people eager to find its secret to success for many years. Too often we shout "Eureka!" and run off to implement the set of techniques or tools that seem to fit our situation that best. When this approach is only partially successful, we make excuses that "we are different" than Toyota. In fact, all of our businesses and processes are more similar to Toyota than we would like to admit. What Toyota does differently and better than most of us is to learn from others and from themselves, studying both failures and successes. Exploring the keys to the Toyota Production System and its success requires that we keep an open mind and seek to learn from many sources. Book 2 of The Illustrated Toyota Production System: A Process Improvement Methodology provides immediately useful ideas and tool for continuous improvement that can be applied again and again to reduce waste and improve productivity, safety, and quality.

The Complete Lean Enterprise: Value Stream Mapping for Administrative and Office Processes

The Complete Lean Enterprise: Value Stream Mapping for Administrative and Office Processes Review

"Winner of the 2005 Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research"

Most lean initiatives conducted by manufacturers are focused mostly on shop-floor activities — mapping the value stream of raw material to the shop-floor customer. Much of the untapped potential for productivity improvements lies, however, in non-production areas — where the value stream is administrative (i.e., "order to cash"). These "office" value streams directly support the daily production needs of an enterprise.

Beau Keyte and Drew Locher's new book, The Complete Lean Enterprise: Value Stream Mapping for Administrative and Office Processes, offers a step-by-step approach to applying lean initiatives to the administrative and office environment. It's a must read for leaders looking to improve their production support activities within their order-to-cash value stream. The Complete Lean Enterprise is a valuable tool in applying value stream mapping (VSM) to non-production areas, identifying office wastes, establishing performance metrics, speeding up administrative workflow, and improving office efficiency.

Value Engineering Synergies with Lean Six Sigma: Combining Methodologies for Enhanced Results

Value Engineering Synergies with Lean Six Sigma: Combining Methodologies for Enhanced Results Review

Lean Six Sigma (LSS), Design for Six Sigma (DFSS), and Value Engineering (VE) have a proven track record of success for solving problems and improving efficiency. Depending on the situation, integrating these approaches can provide results that exceed the benefits of each individual approach. Value Engineering Synergies with Lean Six Sigma: Combining Methodologies for Enhanced Results describes how to integrate these dynamic tools to achieve unprecedented improvements and break down the organizational stovepipes that can occur when different offices are assigned responsibility for different problem-solving methods.

The book identifies opportunities where readers can integrate these approaches to go beyond what is currently possible with the individual approaches. Explaining the VE methodology, it supplies a high-level discussion of LSS and DFSS. Next, it compares VE with LSS and identifies the different opportunities for synergies that can provide your organization with a competitive edge.

• Includes detailed LSS-VE cross-reference charts
• Contains product- and process-oriented VE material designed for LSS black belt training
• Provides a list of the most commonly used LSS, DFSS, and VE tools

The authors describe VE and LSS in a way that is different from, but consistent with, the current literature. To facilitate comparison, the book graphically depicts VE and LSS and maps the two tools into one another to provide you with a clear understanding of the circumstances and types of problems where integrating these techniques will be most effective. The ideas and synergies presented in this book can help industry professionals and those in government accelerate the adoption of efficiencies in their operations.

Utilizing the 3Ms of Process Improvement in Healthcare: A Roadmap to High Reliability Using Lean, Six Sigma, and Change Leadership

Utilizing the 3Ms of Process Improvement in Healthcare: A Roadmap to High Reliability Using Lean, Six Sigma, and Change Leadership Review

Leading change in the right direction and sustaining that change is extremely difficult without managing the relevant measures, especially in today's healthcare environment. This book details how to use the 3Ms (Measure, Manage to Measure, Make-it-Easy) of change leadership in healthcare. It includes healthcare case studies that illustrate the proper application of the 3Ms. Complete with forms and templates to facilitate application of the 3Ms, the text describes a culture change method that is based on changing behaviors.

Overhaul the Sales Process: Creating a More Efficient & Effective Sales Engine (Volume 1)

Overhaul the Sales Process: Creating a More Efficient & Effective Sales Engine (Volume 1) Review

In Overhaul the Sales Process, you'll thoroughly explore the traditional sales model that most companies use to approach selling; understand where it breaks down; and, gain insights into a better sales model that is more productive, reliable, efficient and psychologically healthy. Once you overhaul your sales process, you will deliver value in the very way that you sell.

Pivotal Swing -: How to Fundamentally Change the Game of Baseball !! or - How 'YOU' Can Help Change the Game of Baseball !!

Pivotal Swing -: How to Fundamentally Change the Game of Baseball !! or - How 'YOU' Can Help Change the Game of Baseball !! Review

The general objective of the book is to improve the hitting process. The specific object inside of that is to see .400 hitters in MLB again. This book is about change! And the context is baseball, more specifically, the “hitting” process. I have strategically and effectively blended the art and science of hitting by developing a robust design methodology that will impact the game of baseball forever. Caution: if you read this book, you will never think about hitting the same way ever again. Legitimate, positive change in any endeavor is not possible without process improvement methods. This book provides an actionable Six Sigma - process improvement methodology that, if applied according to the detailed instructions presented, will result in improved hitting performance. Even if you have never played the game of baseball, this book will provide insight into how anyone can go about improving any aspect of their life. This book is like a David & Goliath situation. I (as David) am an ‘outsider’ of the formal baseball industry (as Goliath). The book is to show how ‘David’ can and should take-on (challenge) the huge ‘Goliath’. With knowledge, specific skill and precise execution a ‘regular’ person faced ‘Goliath’ and slew him. We are told in the Bible some of the history of ‘David’. We are not told the history of ‘Goliath’. I think that is applicable here too. To me it is important for the readers to know enough about the path I have been down to be able to see how ‘David’ could put all these pieces together and improve something the ‘Goliaths’ (inside experts) haven’t been able to do. My experience includes extensive work with Six Sigma and process improvement (PI) application and deployment in the corporate world. In that world I have seen Six Sigma and PI applied to every process imaginable. There have been very dramatic results in some cases. It was no stretch for me to decide to apply these methods to the hitting process. I am very excited about how successful the effort was. The challenge now is to communicate the development and results to those that can benefit from it. There are various ways the readers can join the endeavor. As a result of extensive work, it is clear that process improvement (scientific methods) tools have not been applied to the hitting process in the past. The book gets into the details of some very easy items that should have been done long ago if those methods had been used. It also shows the development of new elements needed that improve the most important output of the hitting process. A clue on that is that it isn’t base hits. They are very important for historical purposes but that is not the best measure of whether the hitting process is optimized or can be improved. The value of a better hitting process is very high. Players of all ages have been trying to improve since the start of the game. The difference today is the application of PI tools. The use of practical and logical Six Sigma methods allows us to see any process dramatically differently than without them. As described in the book I believe the Pivotal SwingTM method is a core level process improvement. If the 2nd level testing confirms that, we will then be able to gather data on how much. The statistics are clear that a change of 30 points will be enough to ‘fundamentally change the game’. If the change is in that range or higher, a player or team that doesn’t use it may not be able to compete with those that do. As a player, you can bet you wouldn’t catch me on the short-end of that stick. Competition is what this world is all about. In many aspects of life we are seeking to gain a ‘competitive advantage’ that will set us apart from the crowd. Everyone wants to win the ‘World Series’ or be a ‘Champion’ in some endeavor. Those that choose to implement and perfect the Pivotal SwingTM will have a ‘competitive advantage’. Roger U. Hart www.PivotalSwing.com

System-on-a-Chip Verification - Methodology and Techniques

System-on-a-Chip Verification - Methodology and Techniques Review

This is the first book to cover verification strategies and methodologies for SOC verification from system level verification to the design sign-off. All the verification aspects in this exciting new book are illustrated with a single reference design for Bluetooth application.

White Space Revisited: Creating Value through Process

White Space Revisited: Creating Value through Process Review

When Improving Performance: Managing the White Space on the Organization Chart was published in 1990, it was lauded as the book that launched the Process Improvement revolution. This was the book that first detailed an approach that bridged the gaps between organization strategy, work processes and individual performance. Two decades later, White Space Revisited goes beyond a mere revision of that groundbreaking book and refocuses on the ultimate purpose of organizations, which is to create and sustain value.This book picks up where Improving Performance left off and shares what we have learned about process in the past 15 years since it was published and how the reader (primarily practitioners) can capitalize on these notions in their own pursuit of process excellence.

White Space Revisited is a comprehensive resource that offers process and performance professionals a conceptual foundation, a thorough and proven methodology, a set of remarkable working tools for doing process work in a more significant way, and a series of candid observations about the practice of Business Process Management (BPM). The book’s time-tested methods, models, tools, and guidelines serve to align people, process, and technology

White Space Revisited includes information on a wealth of vital topics and

• Describes the difference in impact of focusing on single processes vs. large scale improvements
• Provides an integrated step-by-step blueprint for designing, implementing, and sustaining process management
• Offers a detailed methodology for strategic and tactical process definition and improvement
• Spells out how to leverage the power of IT to optimize organizational performance
• Shows how to integrate the energy and value of Six Sigma, Process Improvement and Process Management into an effective Process Excellence Group

The GE Work-Out : How to Implement GE's Revolutionary Method for Busting Bureaucracy & Attacking Organizational Proble

The GE Work-Out : How to Implement GE's Revolutionary Method for Busting Bureaucracy & Attacking Organizational Proble Review

Famous "Work-Out" change-management tool explained by the people who helped develop it.

GE's legendary Work-Out program played a key role in the company's phenomenal success over the past decade and has been implemented in many other organizations. Now three executives and consultants who developed the original Work-Out approach at GE­­often working directly with CEO Jack Welch­­discuss the inner workings of Work-Out and their experiences at successfully implementing the program at GE.

Filled with effective assessment and decisionmaking tools, The GE Work-Out provides concrete and realistic guidance for anyone who wants to implement Work-Out and break down bureaucracy and hierarchy within an organization.