Practitioner Perceptions of the A3 Method for Process Improvement in Health Care

The focus of this article is to present students’ perceptions of the recently developed A3 method, a structured problem-solving approach based on lean concepts and tools that have been adapted to the health care environment. The students were all employees of a large health care provider and were enrolled in a customized health care executive MBA Program. Each student was required to complete an individual A3 Project in order to improve a process at the department for which they worked. At the end of the semester the students presented their A3 projects to their peers who voted on the best projects. A survey measuring perceptions of the A3 method for problem solving in health care was administered and from it we present propositions for A3 implementation. These propositions are applicable both to health care practitioners and to academic researchers

A Psychologically-Based Framework for the Measurement of Customer Satisfaction in Service Operations

In the past two decades, service organizations have come under intense governmental and societal pressures to become more cost effective and have come under intense stakeholder pressure to become more profitable. These pressures have caused organizations to focus on what actually creates profits from their operations. A consensus exists that customer retention is the key to financial success. The literature establishes that loyalty is an antecedent of retention and that satisfaction is the major antecedent of loyalty; however, prior service operations studies have focused on quality. Therefore, there is a need to establish a framework for measuring satisfaction before attempting to measure loyalty or retention. This study examines the operations management, marketing, and psychology literature to develop a structural equation modeling framework within which to measure customer satisfaction. Request a copy of the paper from the author: Angela M. Wicks ([email protected]

A Satisfaction-Based Definition of Quality

No consensus has been reached on a definition for quality; the term is defined differently for products and services, for different industries, and for different levels of dimensionality. This study investigates the major definitions of quality and the antecedents of customer retention to establish a foundation for a new definition of quality based on satisfaction. Quality is defined as the summation of the affective evaluations by each customer of each attitude object that creates customer satisfaction

Utilizing the Service Transaction Analysis Method in a Real-World Service Operations Project

This paper describes a new method to link theory and practice using a real-world, two-part, group service project for Operations Management (OM) courses. In Part 1, students determine the mission statement, competitive priorities and antecedents of customer satisfaction for the fast food industry. The students also identify the order winners and order qualifiers related to the competitive priorities and antecedents of customer satisfaction. In Part 2, students conduct a field study of a fast food restaurant selected by the instructor. The service transaction analysis technique introduced by Johnston (1999) is used to evaluate the service process for two visits to the restaurant. During one visit, students use the walk-in service; during the second visit, students use the drive-thru service. A formal written report is required where students compare their views from Part 1 with the outcomes from Part 2, identify the most positive and negative messages received during the visits, determine the root cause(s) for the negative messages, and suggest ways to correct the problems in order to improve customer satisfaction. This project has numerous benefits. Students develop a deeper understanding of what they have learned in the classroom by applying the concepts to a real-world situation. They learn to prepare a detailed analysis of a service process that helps the students understand the importance of designing a service process that ensures customer satisfaction. In addition, the students can easily relate to the project. Students assume the customer role; all students have experience as customer, and the lack of work experience is not a detriment. For instructors, the project minimizes the problems associated with recruiting companies to work with the students. This is especially beneficial to new instructors who have not yet established local industry contacts. The project can be used in undergraduate, graduate, and elective programs, and the project can be adapted for Marketing and Computer Information Systems courses

Radio Frequency Identification Applications in Health Care

When lives are at stake, zero defects should be the established standard. This philosophy applies whether the federal government is attempting to protect the nation?s drug supply from terrorist attack or in other healthcare environments where patient safety is critically important and where medical errors can result in death or serious injury. Therefore, any technology that can reduce the threat of terrorist attack, reduce medical errors, and increase patient safety should be thoroughly tested and evaluated. Radio frequency identification (RFID) is one technology that holds great promise. In this paper we discuss the potential benefits, the areas of applications, implementation challenges and corresponding strategies of RFID in the healthcare industry. Key Words: Health Care, RFID, Supply Chain Management, Adoption and Implementation, E-Busines

Definitions of the Antecedents of Patient Satisfaction for an Ambulatory Surgery Center

A shift in focus from quality to satisfaction (Johnson and Gustafsson, 2000) has created a need for further research into satisfaction and its antecedents (Westbrook and Oliver, 1991, and Oliver, 1993). This paper examines the traditionally used antecedents of satisfaction from the health care management, service operations management, and customer satisfaction literatures to develop the appropriate antecedents of patient satisfaction for an ambulatory surgery center. The original ten dimensions of quality (Parasuraman, et al., 1985) and focus group discussions were utilized to develop and define the antecedents of patient satisfaction

A Psychologically-Based Definition of Customer Satisfaction

A shift in focus from quality to satisfaction (Johnson and its antecedents ) has created a need for further research into satisfaction (Westbrook and Oliver, 1991, and Oliver, 1993). This paper examines the psychology, customer satisfaction, service operations management, and health care management literatures to develop an appropriate definition for overall satisfaction and to develop a definition of satisfaction for each process segment of an ambulatory surgery process

Narragansett Brewing Company \u27Build a Brewery\u27 Case Study Competition, Spring 2012

Over the past 10 years we have utilized a variety of empirical assignments to add elements of real-world problem solving and decision making in the curricula of the core undergraduate and graduate Operations Management (OM) courses at Bryant University. Some of these assignments have included a customer satisfaction project (Wicks & Visich, 2006), a production game (Roethlein et al., 2002) originated from The Production Game (Denton, 1990), an A3 project for process improvement in health care (Visich et al., 2010), and a web-based mass customization assignment (Visich et al., 2012). While there are varying degrees of creative thinking designed into these projects, they all have a high level of structure in how the students should approach the requirements. This past spring 2012 we decided to add a highly unstructured case study competition to the core OM curricula: a team project to build a brewery for the Narragansett Brewing Company (NBC), where the student teams would compete against each other to see who had the most comprehensive plan. While a case competition was new to our OM curriculum, this format has been used in the past at Bryant University for other courses. The core Computer Information Systems course has a data analysis competition where the teams analyze data from a real financial services company using Excel. The capstone strategy course hosts the Target Case Competition where students analyze a current business problem faced by the Target Corporation. Past projects have included the location of a distribution center to service the New England region and a business strategy for international expansion into Canada. Since this would be our first case study competition, we used our knowledge of these competitions to help us design our case study. In this article, we discuss our Build a Brewery project and the lessons we learned