Supply Chain / Central Sterile Case Study

Business case 

  • 627 bed hospital desired to reduce OR supplies and instrument inventory by 1M
  • Desire to eliminate labor and other wastes in supplies and instrument operations

Initial Conditionsupply-chain-process-improvement

  • Instrument tray accuracy rate less than 78%
  • Instrument tray assembly rate averaging 16 min. per case
  • Average OR supply case pull time averaging 11 minutes
  • Excessive overtime and FTE levels

Target Condition

  • Re-allocate 3 FTE’s to enhance constrained areas, reduce supervisory time related to error correction
  • Improve instrument accuracy rate to over 95%
  • Reduce inventory levels in excess of 1M
  • Reduce case cart pull times and decontam process response times

Planned Activities / Intervention

  • Hospital Executive team and CSPD management team attended a 2 Day Lean Overview / Leadership class
  • CSPD supervisors trained on Lean Overview, 7 Wastes, 5S, and Standardized Work
  • Development of roles and responsibilities for medical tower instrument room staff thereby achieving process optimization, and reducing hours of coverage
  • Development of visual management, standardized work, and single piece flow in main OR instrument room decontamination process
  • Development of Information / Communication Board within CSPD to drive process improvements, Daily management and Policy deployment process
  • Development of Kamishibai board for a sustainment tool for auditing improvements, standardized work, and single point lessons.

Achieved Metricssupply-chain-process

  • Instrument Room Quality Rate increased from 78% to 92%
  • Supply case cart accuracy increased from 83% to 87% to date
  • Supply case cart pull time reduced form 10min.  to 6 min.
  • Inventory reduced by 1.1M
  • 3 FTE reallocated and overtime eliminated