Easy Lean Lab Exercises Laboratories can increase productivity and improve safety with four simple continuous-improvement principles. by Nicole Nelson, Laboratory and Healthcare Market Manager, Brady Corp.
Visual cues such as labels make identifying an item and its designated storage area quick and easy. | Lean is one of the most popular improvement methodologies used in the manufacturing world, and its success is quickly carrying over into other industries, including laboratories. Many improvements can be made within the lab environment and its processes, especially with more labs facing reduced budgets and fewer staff members. Lean can be a successful solution for managing processes in a more cost-effective and safer way.
What is Lean?
Lean is a set of techniques used to manage a work environment by eliminating waste, organizing the workplace, streamlining procedures and establishing clear, visual standards. In the lab, Lean initiatives focus on improving safety, eliminating wasted motion, space and supplies, reducing errors, and automating the specimen handling process.
According to the Mayo Clinic’s Medical Laboratories white paper, “Innovations in the Clinical Laboratory,” Lean is a continual process of improvement: “The main objective of Lean, when applied in the laboratory, is to deliver quality patient laboratory results, at the lowest cost, within the shortest time frame while maintaining client satisfaction.”
Remove the waste
For a Lean lab to be successful, its first initiatives need to focus on eliminating waste—any activity that does not add value to a process. Traditionally, there are seven types of waste: transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, over production, over processing and defective product (see chart).
There are four tactics that are essential to removing the waste and establishing a Lean laboratory: value stream mapping, 5S workplace organization, visual workplace and work cell specimen processing.
1. Value stream mapping
To help identify the waste in your lab, you can organize a “kaizen event,” a well-defined, short-term project that aims to improve one of your existing processes. Gather the necessary stakeholders for each process—those who work throughout the process, as well as those involved with its input and output. Approach the event as a unified team; you’ll better educate your staff on the Lean goals and increase the buy-in for the improved process.
Create a map or a flowchart that outlines the current state of the process, including the task, duration and deliverable of each stage. Click to enlarge | At the beginning of each kaizen event, create a map or a flowchart that outlines the current state of the process, including the task, duration and deliverable of each stage. With a clear vision of the workflow, you can identify where the waste and bottleneck activities occur.
Next, create a “future-state map” that demonstrates the ideal specimen management process, keeping the fit, form or function as key principles. The work should flow through the lab so a sample does not need to wait between tests.
After both maps are created, begin to implement the improvements by modifying the facility’s layout, workspaces and processes as defined in the future state map. Start by improving one aspect of the process and sustaining it; then work to improve another part of the process. A Lean lab cannot be created all at once. Continuous improvement needs to be a progressive, ongoing process in order to meet your lab organization goals.
2. 5S workplace organization Another way to improve safety and increase productivity is a simple Lean methodology called 5S. This Japanese concept is designed to reduce waste and optimize productivity through better organization of the workplace. The 5S pillars are Sort (Seiri), Set in Order (Seiton), Shine (Seiso), Standardize (Seiketsu), and Sustain (Shitsuke). A sixth “S”, Safety, is often added to ensure safety remains a priority for all future improvements.
The 5S approach emphasizes the importance of maintaining an orderly workplace and using visual cues to reduce the amount of wasted time that is spent searching, looking, waiting and asking. Below are some simple ways to apply the 5S principles to your lab:
■ Sort: Sort through all of the items in a given location, marking all unnecessary items with a red tag or sticker. Move the red-tagged items into a temporary holding area where management can determine how to dispose of them.
■ Set in order: Determine the best location for remaining items. Set inventory limits and reorder triggers.
■ Shine: Clean your entire laboratory to eliminate sources of contamination. Use cleaning as a forum of inspection to detect equipment abnormalities and impeding failures before they occur.
■ Standardize: Create guidelines and procedures for maintaining the first three S’s. Use visual controls such as check sheets and schedules to provide daily, monthly or quarterly instructions on how to maintain order.
■ Sustain: Regularly communicate and train employees to maintain the laboratory’s adherence to the 5S standards.
3. Visual workplace
A fundamental element of any Lean lab initiative is visual workplace: the concept of creating a workplace that is entirely visually instructive. Visual cues—such as labels, signs or colors—are vital to sustaining Lean practices. They ensure that the improvements are clearly visible, easily understood and adhered to by all employees.
How to create a visual lab
Apply visual thinking wherever Lean improvements are made in the lab. Pre-printed or custom labels can identify where changes have been made and reinforce new standard practices. The primary goal is to single-mindedly eliminate “information deficits” and minimize the waste associated with not knowing: ie. searching, asking, waiting, retrieving and reworking.
The visual workplace is also a key component of 5S workplace organization. Oftentimes a lab area appears organized, but an item, or even a specimen, may be missing. Unfortunately, you might not realize this until you are in the middle of a test. Visual cues allow you to assess a designated workspace immediately, making the absence of any item obvious at a glance. They also make identifying an item and its designated storage space quick and easy.
4. Work cell specimen processing
Another useful Lean lab strategy is work cell specimen processing (WCSP)—the physical or logical layout of all testing and processing equipment, technicians, machines, and materials through which a specimen flows. Work cells minimize movement, reduce batch sizes, decrease set-up time for testing, improve lab safety, and standardize work processes with visual cues.
How to implement WCSP
To create work cells in your lab, first determine what is needed; consider the tasks, tools, materials and information. If you are challenged with limited space, implement a 5S event to free up space by eliminating excess supplies and equipment.
Because multiple processes may occur in one cell, cross training technicians on different types of equipment is important for establishing a standardized flow. This converts your staff from a “one-person, one-machine” model to a versatile, multi-functional team, which also enables you to adjust your manpower depending on the changes in demand.
If possible, using the One Piece Flow method (where one specimen is moved at a time between operations) within a work cell is most effective for labs. Batch processing can slow down turnaround time; the more samples in a batch, the longer it takes to get an individual specimen to the next step. For example, if a batch of tubes is labeled at once, a technician must then marry each tube to its specimen, creating a backlog.
On-demand automated printing solutions are available from your LIMS or LIS that can automatically identify the carrier with a durable label and then immediately match it to the specimen. This automation can improve information integrity and ensure safe handling.
Conclusion
These four Lean tactics create a concise, step-by-step methodology for organizing, cleaning, developing and sustaining a productive lab environment.
As with any new business decision, management buy-in is critical for successful implementation. Inform your team that while Lean processes may be different and difficult at first, the long-term results can create a positive work environment that fosters productivity, safety and security. ●
More information is available at www.bradyid.com/visualworkplace. For additional information about specimen labeling, visit www.bradyid.com/lab.
Reference
1. Amirahmadi, Fazi, Al Dalbello, Dan Gronseth, and Jean McCarthy. "Innovations in the Clinical Laboratory: An Overview of Lean Principles in the Laboratory." (2007): 2. Mayo Medical Laboratories. Aug. 2007. Web. 28 Oct. 2009.
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