Lean Laboratory
Lean Tools versus Lean Systems
Since the emergence of the Toyota Production System (TPS) in the early nineties there have been many successful introductions of Lean manufacturing to all types of differing industries from Healthcare to Retail. Providing Lean consulting services has become big business. But without understanding the deeper principles behind Lean, companies can be too focused on the application of Lean Tools instead of deploying Lean as a holistic system. “Managers are struggling to combine lean techniques into a coherent system.” (Womack & Jones, Beyond Toyota: How to Root Out Waste and Persue Perfection, 1996)
Bringing Flow to the Review and Release Process
The concept of flow is a key element in achieving lean operations. This fact has not gone unnoticed by laboratories but many still struggle to achieve real flow and very often the final review and release of samples can prove to be somewhat of a bottle neck. The final review and release tasks should not be thought of as being autonomous or decoupled from the testing process and should be incorporated in the flowed process.
The Trouble with Dedicated Resources: Leveling the Workload
Dedication of resources may seem like a good way to have “Subject Matter Experts” (SMEs) get through work quickly, but it gives rise to a costly productivity penalty. The antidote is to level the workload across the team (without compromising the important role of the SME!).
Why can't my department get ahead and be productive
In operations where the short interval (e.g. daily or weekly) workload varies, the most common method of distributing the work is to share it equally between the available people. We call this method “available work through available people”. The consequence of this approach is that even low daily workloads expand to fill the day resulting in poor productivity. Carefully designed standard work can improve your department’s performance by consistently making the most out of people’s time.
Can and should Lean be applied in Labs?
Lean originated in the automotive industry and it’s easy to see how the tools and concepts are a good fit for that type of manufacturing. It’s much less obvious however that Lean can and should be applied in Labs. In recent times Lean Lab projects have become quite common but…
Is Lean really an appropriate strategy in the Lab environment or are labs just blindly following trends?
Improving Lab Performance with Six Sigma
Do you want to reduce lead times while improving productivity in your QC testing laboratory? Read the following case study to find out how.
Lab Testing - The Prioritization Problem
Lab testing schedules are often dominated by complex prioritization strategies but there is a less stressful way to successfully deal with samples. BSM can help you break out of backlog and improve your labs KPI's and performance.
Understanding Service Level Agreements in Lean Projects
Service level agreements provide a basis for the metrics against which performance of groups are measured. Discussing and understanding the reasons for (or even implementing) service level agreements are an important initial stage of Lean projects.
Changeover Management in a Controlled Operations Environment
Time in an operational environment can be classified as (1) processing time and (2) non-processing time. Focusing solely on making the processing time efficient is a significant cause of lost improvement opportunities. Standardising variable non-processing time activity (e.g. changeovers) can realise a surprisingly large improvement: a typical changeover standardisation program alone usually achieves 50%+ reduction in changeover times. This increases the time available for processing, but also increases yield and the productivity of resources.
Breaking Barriers in Pharma – How Lean processes help Information flow between Departments
Working as a consultant for different pharmaceutical companies I have come across some interesting examples of how “walls” between departments and between companies affect operations. One complaint you often hear within the industry is that of poor communication between the Manufacturing Department (who manufacture the product) and the Quality Department (who Inspect, test and release the product). I came across one particularly poor example of this last year.
