Value Stream Mapping and Simulation Modelling for Healthcare Transactional Process Improvement

Lean management philosophy was originated in Japan from the Toyota production system. The main idea is to determine and eliminate waste. The concept of end-to-end value allows organizations to achieve competitive advantage through best quality product and services through minimum operational cost. These days there is more to be achieved by applying lean to services and transactional processes floors. Lean facilitators are facing challenges when trying to transform an organization to be a lean enterprise because it is possible in production systems, but that is not easier in the services and transactional sectors, which means there are challenges that should be considered. Some of the challenges for the service sector are; complex and mixed value streams, information and people are processed instead of parts and human interaction is a major part of the service sector

Lean Improvements to Passenger Departure Flow in Abu Dhabi Airport: Focus on Data from the Check-in Element

This is the second paper of three which concerns improving Passenger Departure Flow. The main aim of this paper is provide a summary of the research results, which includes both the reporting of empirical data collected at the Airport and the results obtained from simulation of existing flow for passenger departure process. The large quantity of data means this paper focuses on reporting data for the economy check-in element only. The project led towards development of rules for process of improvement for the entire departure process and explored the benefits of using the Lean philosophy for improving a range of airport processes. Airport processes are completely different than the manufacturing and other service sectors due to the complex interlinking between different stake holders such as airline regulations, national/international law etc

Continuous Process Improvement Implementation Framework Using Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithms and Discrete Event Simulation

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Purpose Continuous process improvement is a hard problem, especially in high variety/low volume environments due to the complex interrelationships between processes. The purpose of this paper is to address the process improvement issues by simultaneously investigating the job sequencing and buffer size optimization problems. Design/methodology/approach This paper proposes a continuous process improvement implementation framework using a modified genetic algorithm (GA) and discrete event simulation to achieve multi-objective optimization. The proposed combinatorial optimization module combines the problem of job sequencing and buffer size optimization under a generic process improvement framework, where lead time and total inventory holding cost are used as two combinatorial optimization objectives. The proposed approach uses the discrete event simulation to mimic the manufacturing environment, the constraints imposed by the real environment and the different levels of variability associated with the resources. Findings Compared to existing evolutionary algorithm-based methods, the proposed framework considers the interrelationship between succeeding and preceding processes and the variability induced by both job sequence and buffer size problems on each other. A computational analysis shows significant improvement by applying the proposed framework. Originality/value Significant body of work exists in the area of continuous process improvement, discrete event simulation and GAs, a little work has been found where GAs and discrete event simulation are used together to implement continuous process improvement as an iterative approach. Also, a modified GA simultaneously addresses the job sequencing and buffer size optimization problems by considering the interrelationships and the effect of variability due to both on each other

Lean Six Sigma Approach to Improve the Admissions Process for a Nigerian HE Institute

Lean as a management paradigm has been applied extensively in manufacturing industries, and so little has been done in the area of its studies and application in managing affairs in education. This paper exemplifies the applicability of Lean Six Sigma approach for higher educational institutes. The problem solved is that of ineffective and inefficient admission process in the ELITE state polytechnic. The project is aimed at proffering a workable and a viable improvement process for the admission of candidates for the ELITE state polytechnic that will be more attractive and have more value for customers and above all, create more wealth for the polytechnic community. The need for improvement is presented in responses from respondents in the question two of the questionnaires. A total of 70 respondents, representing 85% indicate their dissatisfaction with the admission process. To improve the admissions process, the Lean Six Sigma based methodology, DMAIC was applied. A qualitative research analysis was used in analyzing the questionnaires, since the method seeks to understand and the research problems from the perspective of the local population. A test shows positive results when compared with the old practice. There were improvements in a circle, takt, lead and utilization times, reductions in idle time and rework, likewise the process circle efficient (PCE). The results are presented in the current flow chart and the value stream maps

Standalone closed-form formula for the throughput rate of asynchronous normally distributed serial flow lines

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Flexible flow lines use flexible entities to generate multiple product variants using the same serial routing. Evaluative analytical models for the throughput rate of asynchronous serial flow lines were mainly developed for the Markovian case where processing times, arrival rates, failure rates and setup times follow deterministic, exponential or phase-type distributions. Models for non-Markovian processes are non-standalone and were obtained by extending the exponential case. This limits the suitability of existing models for real-world human-dependent flow lines, which are typically represented by a normal distribution. We exploit data mining and simulation modelling to derive a standalone closed-form formula for the throughput rate of normally distributed asynchronous human-dependent serial flow lines. Our formula gave steady results that are more accurate than those obtained with existing models across a wide range of discrete data sets

Using Lean Philosophy to Improve Passenger Departure Flow in Abu Dhabi Airport

Lean is an established process improvement philosophy to achieve the operational excellence and the benefits can be more than just improving the process. This is evident as the benefits of Lean are truly exploited in automotive, aerospace and manufacturing sectors. There are numerous implementations of Lean philosophy in service sector such as banking, higher education, software development etc. The main aim of this paper is provide an overview of Lean philosophy and explore the benefits for airport processes. The airport processes are completely different than the manufacturing and other service sectors due to the complex interlinking between different stake holders such as airline regulations, national/international law etc. This paper exemplifies the Lean philosophy by drawing examples form Passenger Departure Process (PDP) in Abu Dhabi International Airport (a major international airport). This paper starts with examining the background to the project and why airports have many characteristic features, which are fundamentally different to the manufacturing environment in which Lean was originally devised. Since its origins, Lean philosophy has been also applied to many service environments. Further, Lean philosophy is introduced and Lean principles and waste is discussed from the PDP perspective. Along this, a brief literature review is presented on the existing process improvement approaches used in the airports. The ultimate aim of the project which it has achieved was to develop a practical methodology of applying Lean principles to the PDP help airline managers and staff eliminates the waste of available resources and so increases the passenger flow through various stages of the process in line with Lean philosophy

Process Control Parameters Evaluation Using Discrete Event Simulation for Business Process Optimization

The quest for manufacturing process improvement and higher levels of customer satisfaction mandates that organizations must be equipped with advanced tools and techniques in order to respond towards ever changing internal and external customer demands by maintaining the optimal process performance, lower cost and higher profit levels. A manufacturing process can be defined as a collection of activities designed to produce a specific output for a particular customer or market. To achieve internal and external objectives, significant process parameters must be identified and evaluated to optimize the process performance. This even becomes more important to deal with fierce competition and ever changing customer demands. This paper illustrates an integrated approach using design of experiments techniques and discrete event simulation (Simul8) to understand and optimize the system dynamic based on operational control parameter evaluation and their boundary conditions. Further, the proposed model is validated using a real world manufacturing process case study to optimize the manufacturing process performance. Discrete event simulation tool is used to mimic the real world scenario, which provides a flexible and powerful way to comprehensively understand the manufacturing process variations and allows controlled 'What-If´ analysis based on design of experiments approach. Finally, this paper discusses the potential applications of the proposed methodology in the cable industry in order to optimize the cable manufacturing process by regulating the operational control parameters such as dealing with various product configurations with different equipment settings, different product flows and work in process (WIP) space limitations

Investigating the Demand for Short-shelf Life Food Products for SME Wholesalers

Accurate forecasting of fresh produce demand is one the challenges faced by Small Medium Enterprise (SME) wholesalers. This paper is an attempt to understand the cause for the high level of variability such as weather, holidays etc., in demand of SME wholesalers. Therefore, understanding the significance of unidentified factors may improve the forecasting accuracy. This paper presents the current literature on the factors used to predict demand and the existing forecasting techniques of short shelf life products. It then investigates a variety of internal and external possible factors, some of which is not used by other researchers in the demand prediction process. The results presented in this paper are further analysed using a number of techniques to minimize noise in the data. For the analysis past sales data (January 2009 to May 2014) from a UK based SME wholesaler is used and the results presented are limited to product ‘Milk’ focused on café’s in derby. The correlation analysis is done to check the dependencies of variability factor on the actual demand. Further PCA analysis is done to understand the significance of factors identified using correlation. The PCA results suggest that the cloud cover, weather summary and temperature are the most significant factors that can be used in forecasting the demand. The correlation of the above three factors increased relative to monthly and becomes more stable compared to the weekly and daily demand

Exploration of Lean Principals in Higher Educational Institutes – Based on Degree of

Abstract — Increased competition and scarcity of resources in global markets has augmented the problems for manufacturing industry, which has forced organizations to adopt new tools and techniques in order to find the proactive solutions. In Past, manufacturing industry has exemplified that the key to survive in highly competitive and rapidly changing environments is to implement the more effective, proactive and long term solutions to a problem. Similar to the manufacturing organizations, higher educational institutes are facing similar challenges such as increased competitions, higher quality of service at competitive cost and variability in customer demand in terms of requested services. In fact, in terms of problem landscape, associated problem variables and goals for higher educational institutes are similar as of manufacturing industries. The only difference is the way these are interpreted and represented. Lean principles and waste used by the manufacturing organizations are used as basic building block for this research. The main objective of this paper is to illustrate the waste in higher educational institutes with respect to the three fundamental elements i.e. Students, Research and Staff. This can provide the basic framework for other process improvement implementations in higher educational institutes. Along this, the other most important aspect is the indigence to implement Lean based approaches and up to what extent as well as effectiveness of implementation in terms of invested time, resources and money. The scope of this paper is limited to interpret the waste in higher educational institutes, which can act as basic framework for other process improvements in the educational industry. This is step forward to implement Lean based structure to the higher educational institutes in order to maximize the revenue, throughput and customer satisfaction with high qualit

Applying lean principles to health economics transactional flow process to improve the healthcare delivery

The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. Open access publicationAbstract: Defects reduction and end-to-end process improvement are key to successful delivery of key services such as healthcare. This research paper investigates the implication of Lean management for healthcare service improvement. Transactional flow process is one of the key processes within the Saudi Arabian healthcare system. Transactional flow process in health economics needs to be defects free to insure an accurate healthcare delivery. This paper identifies and investigates two transactional flows within the health economics department. The anticipated outcome of this research paper is identification of two value streams and critical analysis of the Lean tools to improve the overall performance