In the hospital, for any surgeon, each of them has a special set of surgical instruments, which has become a rule. In cardiac surgery in clinical medical college, this means that each type of surgery needs six different trays, one for each doctor.
However, one idea of Lean Six Sigma is that unnecessary complexity will increase cost, time and huge waste. So, the hospital called all the surgeons together and asked, "Can we change this rule?" Naturally, surgeons will be skeptical at first: "each of us needs our own surgical instruments."
But what is the real situation? When examining the problem further, the surgeon realized that using six different instruments had no effect on the success of the operation. After several discussions, they agreed to use a set of standard surgical instruments, which means that the purchasing department can buy less surgical instruments and more ones it needs.
In this hospital, this simple principle and other lean six sigma concepts continue to be applied. And the result? The cost of materials is reduced by $25 million every year. The nursing cost has also been reduced, the average cost of surgery has dropped by 40%, and the mortality rate of heart surgery has dropped from 7. 1% to 3%.
If you solve this problem, you may think in a more traditional way and try to prepare surgical instruments better and faster, instead of considering whether these trays are necessary first.
Process improvement is the only way to improve the company's output and results. You must check every workflow, observe the process fluctuation and consider its influence on the process.
First of all, you should become a "process thinker", a person who considers problems and consequences with the concept of process. Completing this conceptual leap will have a far-reaching impact on you.
Suppose a report, an order or a part assembly is not completed on time, or there is an error in the project or department you are responsible for. For us, the instinctive reaction is to find out who made the mistake and who should be responsible.
We all make mistakes, but a process thinker will look for reasons from the process, because most problems are caused by the process. They will ask, "Do we let employees know the expectations of customers? Does this person have enough information, materials and equipment to do a good job? Has this person received any job training? What is the key cause of the problem and how can we prevent it from happening again? "
When there is a problem, you will first think of "what happened in the process" instead of "this person is terrible"! Then you really become a process thinker.