Read Chapter 5 Lean and Six Sigma Management: Building a Foundation for Optimal Patient Care Using Patient Flow Physics and describe several tools and methodologies that can be applied to improve quality and efficiency of health processes in various health care environments. Include examples of how these tools have been applied to healthcare organizations.

Six Sigma Sigma is a Greek alphabet letter that is used in statistics to designate the distribution or variance about the mean (average) of any process or procedure.For a business or manufacturing process, the sigma value is a measure that indicates how well that process is performing. The higher the sigma value, the better. Sigma measures the capability of the process to perform defect-free-work. A defect is anything that results in customer dissatisfaction. The Six Sigma standard is a measure of quality which equates with only 3.4 defects per million opportunities for each product or service transaction.

Sigma is a Greek letter of the alphabet that is related to a measure of "Standard Error" or standard deviation from the mean/average. In other words, it measures how far a given process deviates from perfection.

Six Sigma is a standard of excellence defined as, "A process must not produce more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities." A Six Sigma defect is defined as anything outside of customer specifications or expectations. Opportunity is defined as a chance for nonconformance to required specifications/expectations.

Most companies operate at three or four sigma standards which translates into about 6,200 67,000 defects per million opportunities. In real terms this means 25% of their revenues are spent fixing defects. This is known as the "cost of poor quality."

What are the origins of six sigma?

Six sigma as a measurement standard in product variation can be traced back to the 1920s when Walter Shewhart showed that three sigma from the mean is the point where a process requires correction. Many measurement standards such as Zero Defects later came about, but credit for coining the term "Six Sigma" goes to Motorola engineer named Bill Smith in the 1980s. "Six Sigma" is a federally registered trademark of Motorola. As a result of implementing the Six Sigma standard Motorola documented savings of over $16 billion dollars.

Since then, thousands of companies around the world, most notably General Electric and General Motors, have adopted Six Sigma as a way of doing business. Accompanying this surge in interest, hundreds of business consultants have abandoned the Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) and Total Quality Management (TQM) approaches that were thriving in the late 1990s and dove head first into six sigma.

Three Key Elements of Quality:

Customers: Expect performance, reliability, competitive prices, on-time delivery, and service. Clear and correct transaction processing and more. "Manage the moment of truth" refers to any encounter with a current or potential customer and meeting or exceeding their expectations of that encounter.

Process: Look at all organizational processes from the customer's perspective and not your own. This way you can add significant value or improvement from their perspective.

Employee: Commitment by all employees maximizes their talents and energies on customer satisfaction and meeting Six Sigma status.

What are the 3 key characteristics of Six Sigma?

Leadership Commitment Achieving Six Sigma is not easy and requires serious commitment in the form of time, effort, and resources. For a company to reach six sigma status commitment must come first from the top executive leadership of the organization and practiced by everyone.

Managing Decisions with Data Everyone must properly use data to measure, analyze improve and control performance rather than make decisions based on the typical "I think", "I feel", or "In my opinion".

Training and Cultural Change Improved performance does not and will not happen automatically. High-caliber training is required. Disciplined implementation must follow, and people at all levels have to change the way they go about doing their jobs. New ways of thinking, communicating and operating must pervade the entire organization.

After reviewing the concepts and characteristics of Six Sigma there are a couple of related items to discuss. First is the popular niche of Lean Six Sigma. Lean Six Sigma implements the same methodology with the same characteristics and goals as good old-fashioned Six Sigma. In the Lean Six Sigma description there are 8 basics related to increasing speed, improving quality and reducing costs. They are:

Customer Connectivity.

Information Integrity.

Performance Management.

Quality Management ISO 9001:2000.

Team Dynamics.

Value Stream Mapping.

Business Process Management.

Resource Planning.