Question

In the Define Phase of the Lean Sigma Six Approach, the subject organization is attempting to define a problem that needs to be addressed. Please explain why this phase is important to the quality improvement process. Your post should be written from the perspective of a particular quality issue you have seen in your work experience.

Answer 1

Six sigma approach is a method to analyze variation and is data driven,so that a better performance is obtained within six standard deviations.The phases are Define,Measure,Analyze,Improve and control. Define phase is based on project selection ,team formatting and defining opportunities.This 6 improvement process are known as DMAIC .LSS is always in the pursuit of precision and accuracy.Medication errors is a common scenario in every department.most of the medication errors occured at the point of care when the physician orders medications.Though we have a computerized order entry systems which is expected to reduce errors ,other sources of errors constitute problems in drug administration.Further improvement in drug orderi ng and using Lean Sigma approach (LSS) can definitely solve the problem.As a part of the define phase of the DMAIC approach ,the team involving staff representatives from the nursing representatives developed process maps to get an insight into the cause of the problems.They started narrowing down the list of recent medication errors and the factors contributing to the negligence and poor quality care.The team then started prioritizing the factors for investigation and directing their attention to another phase of LSS ie Analysis