Analyse Phase

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Analysing Sources of Variation

During this phase of our project our team met to discuss the various sources of variation associated with our current process. The cause and effect diagram below demonstrates these.

We also decided that an FMEA chart would be useful to help pin point  high risk elements of our current process to make sure whatever process improvements we may implement at a later date will be sufficient.

We found the FMEA extremely useful as most "Potential Causes" were as a result of human error, therefore implementation of an automated system should correct most of these variables.

The following Control chart represents further analysis of data collected in the Measure Phase illustrating the number of Thyroid Antibody samples processed daily in Histology. This number of samples should be easily incorporated into such an automated laboratory as Biochemistry. This figure may even be overestimated as the point on the graph on Day 2 is outside 2SD so this needs to be investigated.

Critical to Schedule (CTS) factors or Turn around Times (TAT) from receipt of specimen to authorisation are a vital aspect of this project. At present our user manual states that our TAT for these tests is 2 days. The following Histogram illustrates recent TAT's recorded. This demonstrates excellent compliance of TAT's.

 Analyse Phase Summary

Through Brainstorming sessions and FMEA, we can conclude that much of our possible sources of variation are directly related to the fact that the current method is so "manual" resulting in many opportunities for human error. An move to an automated platform in the remaining phases of this project should correct this. Daily sample numbers are encouraging, these sample numbers should easily be incorporated into the current Biochemistry workload.

The project in on schedule and the team are looking forward to the Improve Stage next week.