◄ Back to Blood Service in Brief July 2016

In what seems like an unusual match, the Blood Service and representatives from Toyota are teaming up for three process-focused workshops — and we think customers will benefit.

The pairing seems strange at first until you learn that Toyota is the founder of the Toyota Production System, an organisational culture where people are developed to surface and solve problems using specialised tools. These tools are often referred to as ‘lean’ and the Blood Service has been developing its lean practices since introducing the concept internally a few years ago. However, there’s always more to learn.

Mike Thompson, Blood Service Lean Coordinator, organised the workshops with the Melbourne Processing Centre Customer Service and Order Fulfilment teams and John Heer, Manager Toyota Production System Support Center, and his team. His team works with general industry and also not-for-profits to help them improve manufacturing processes. The goal was to dive deeply into the hidden issues lurking behind Blood Service consignment errors, such as sending the wrong product or sending a mismatched batch number for manufactured product.

After learning the fundamentals of the Toyota Production System — including tools and techniques such as how to document the current Standard Work, identify errors, apply and document quality checks, and apply continuous flow and levelling of work — the teams split up into several teams of combined Toyota and Blood Service staff members to tackle the problems.

“What we focused on in the first workshop was process mapping in detail the two main causes of consignment errors: transcription errors, where the staff member transcribes a BloodNet order incorrectly into our National Blood Management System (NBMS); and picking errors for manufactured products, where the wrong thing is picked and put into the order,” said Mike Thompson.

They uncovered that some processes incorporated actions or setups that wasted time, and that some quality checking steps weren’t clear or documented. They also learned that the team had rush periods followed by quieter times. This is against the principles of TPS, where the aim is to manage processes so everyone can work at a steady pace, as pressure and hurrying can lead to mistakes.

One major problem causing urgency for the team is the late placement of routine orders, sometimes with the expectation of filling an order 15 minutes before the courier arrives. The project has shown that the Blood Service needs a minimum of two hours notification for routine orders to maintain a smooth work environment and ensure we have time to process the order in a standard way for the best possible order accuracy.

“We came away with a set of changes and actions that we’re now testing,” said Mike. “Our main goal is to get back any wasted time and, in that time, insert extra quality checking steps to ensure our orders are 100% accurate.”

So far, the workshops have been valuable for the Blood Service team.

“The key insight so far has been the level of detail that is required to truly understand a process.” said Alex Bolonja, Blood Service Business Process Improvement Advisor and joint coordinator of the workshops. “We’ve learned how data collection and precise process measurement is fundamental to continuous improvement.”

Mike noted, “It will take some time to determine if the project is successful as we’ll need to measure our error rate over a significant period, but we’ll keep trialling beyond the end of the project. Hopefully we should get some positive results with a reduced number of customer errors and be able to make those changes permanent.”

We encourage all customers to report any errors to us via BloodNet, email or over the phone so we can keep improving our service.

 

Photo: Toyota and the Blood Service joined forces in workshops to improve order accuracy. 
Front row: Louis Kriho-Friscic (Blood Service), Tina Kien (Toyota) and Antoniette Martin and Vicky Vrailas (both Blood Service). Back Row: Natalie Saint (Blood Service), Chris Lipa (Toyota), Vincent Kisnorbo, Alexandra Bolonja, Michael Thompson and Nicole Barwick (all Blood Service), and John Heer (Toyota).