Tag: workflow

OM in the News: Reducing Manufacturing Waste

With inflation keeping the cost of raw materials high, it has become more important than ever for manufacturing companies to reduce waste as much as possible. Not only is this strategy good for the environment, and the company’s bottom line, but it can also boost employee well-being and morale, writes Industry Week (Nov. 12, 2024). Here are five approaches:

  1. Use Less Material. One obvious solution is to cut down on the amount of materials used. To help identify where waste is coming from – whether it is using more energy or thread than needed to produce a shirt, or printing reports that could easily be shared digitally – a thorough examination of a company’s practices is the first step. Recycling should be prioritized, including printer cartridges, old computers, monitors and batteries from small devices. Recycle containers should be near every workstation.
  2. Save Time. Time management can help cut down on waste substantially by reallocating unnecessary work to more important tasks that will help boost profit. Real-time tracking using radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses radio waves to follow a product from the beginning of manufacturing all the way through to shipping. This helps identify how to potentially streamline and speed up the production process.
  3. Embrace Artificial Intelligence. AI has the potential to discover new areas for improvement that humans may not be able to identify on their own. For example, it could be used to analyze the motion of workers and products throughout the manufacturing process. Cameras can be placed throughout a factory to capture the necessary information for the AI system to review and analyze.
  4. Optimize Workflow. Another type of waste that is important to a manufacturing company’s success is excess movement. When an employee is able to produce more without having to work as hard physically, there is less wear and tear on their bodies. This results in less injuries and sick time needing to be taken, happier employees and ultimately an increase in worker productivity.
  5. Utilize Talent. Initiating training programs to educate employees on best practices can also reduce waste. When employees perform work that unnecessarily squanders both materials and time, they need to be taught there is a better and often easier way to complete those jobs.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. In addition to these 5 ideas in Industry Week, provide several others to reduce waste.
  2. How else can AI be used in a manufacturing process?

Good OM Reading: RX for the Emergency Room

If you want to read an excellent article about issues of quality, capacity, and bottlenecks in hospitals, see OR/MS Today (Oct., 2011), for “RX for the ER”.  The authors (one of whom is head of the ER at New Orleans’ Ochsner Hospital), write: “As an industry, hospitals exhibit technologic excellence in terms of diagnostic and therapeutic innovations. However, service delivery has been absent. The economic incentives to develop and sustain service delivery models that are viewed by the patient as efficient, useful, and valuable have been to a large degree nonexistent in a hospital environment”.

But things may be changing. Patients are demanding relevant information, more choice and better services. As a result, healthcare in the US is beginning to embrace the OM techniques that have made other sectors of American industry competitive. ERs are the perfect place to begin. And Ocshner Hospital had no choice but to reengineer its ER after Hurricane Katrina wiped out 70% of New Orleans’ healthcare services in 2005. ER volumes ramped up overnight to 180% of pre-hurricane averages and wait times tripled. Annual revenue loss, estimated to be $500,000 for every 1% of patients who leave prior to examination, is one factor in hospitals wishing to invest in a more efficient system.

Some of the highlights of the article: (1) ER arrivals tend to follow a known demand curve at different hours (contrary to what many administrators think), making staffing much more efficient; (2) the ER bed is the major resource in the department and it runs at more than 100% capacity a large part of the  day– but 75% of patients do not need a bed and are discharged that day; (3) low risk  patients do not need the services of a highly trained ER physician, and physician assistants can provide good care at 25% of the cost; and (4) registration and triage time can be reduced by 80% with lean workflow models.

This article is full of excellent graphics (10 of them) that you can use in class to make points about lean, waiting line costs and distributions, workflow, and metrics.