Reduce Unique ICDs by Redesigning the Product or the Process

The objective of this activity is to reduce the number of ICDs by reducing the occurrence of an ICD in producing a unit of Output, or by reducing the number of separate ICDs used in the Output. A unique ICD is one of the key activities in the work center's contribution to the final product (O). It is separate and distinct from any other activity in the work center. For example, the fastening of a part onto a subassembly and a quality control check of the subassembly would be unique ICDs.

B. Redesign the process of producing the ICD or Output

Change the process used to produce the ICD or Output to eliminate activities.

5. Reduce errors in process

Improve the diagnosis of the situation: Use an expert to diagnose problem:
Function specialist

No.	Industry SIC	Year	Notes
1	2086	2005	To further offset the higher costs of health care besides higher co-payments and deductibles, companies are testing new ways to find more savings. PepsiCo, American Standard Cos., and others have launched ambitious programs to identify workers at risk for major health problems – and prod them to clean up their acts. At PepsiCo, employees can fill out a health appraisal that looks at everything from their cholesterol levels to their family medical histories. An outside consultant reviews that information and evaluates their chances of developing heart disease, diabetes, and other ailments. Those at high risk can tap health-care coaches paid for by PepsiCo. Some 16% of the company's 50,000 employees now work with a coach.
2	3220	1988	Before Corning's quality program, customers returned 4% of the pieces that the company shipped. Now return rate is just 300/million for funnels and 3000 per million for panels. Pieces are inspected at each stage of the process rather than at the end. Higher performance standards have paid off–Corning has expanded plant's capacity 40% and added 150 hourly workers.
3	3577	1987	YHP instituted a statistical quality approach in all levels of manufacturing, plus R&D, administration, and even sales. From 1975-85, YJP's manufacturing costs plummeted 42% and product defects shrunk 79%. Revenues per employee shot up 193%, and profits soared 244%. Products got to market much more quickly.
4	3700	2005	To further offset the higher costs of health care besides higher co-payments and deductibles, companies are testing new ways to find more savings. Two years ago, a number of large employers, including General Electric, United Parcel Service, and Ford, linked up under a program dubbed Bridges to Excellence to identify the most efficient physicians to treat costly conditions like diabetes or heart disease. If doctors meet the program's requirements, the participating companies will pay a $100 annual bonus per employee and encourage workers to use those physicians. Early results for the program are promising. A study found that the average annual cost to treat a person with diabetes was about 15% lower for doctors who participated in the program vs. those who did not. One reason: fewer hospitalizations. Bridges to Excellence is now being expanded to include back disorders and cancer.
5	4833	1989	Quality Center team evaluates quality score and helps managers set up teams to discover, deploy improvements (instead of passing scores up the chain of command).
6	5900	2006	Retailers are typically vulnerable to fluctuations in the weather. A warm October can delay the winter buying season and force retailers to cut prices to clear out excess inventory. Geography can also play a role, retailers must account for small shifts in buying patterns in regions with milder clients. Some clients are turning to Weather Trends and Planalytics to predict the weather and minimize the risks. While booming businesses are likely to be unaffected by changes in climate, underperforming retailers may want to invest in the information.
7	6324	2004	Aetna Inc. is taking steps to cut down the costs of healthcare by turning to medical experts. It's using staff nurses to provide one-on-one guidance over the phone for some cardiac patients. Such personal contacts helps Aetna's bottom line. Aetna says its program has resulted in a 12% reduction in in-patient admission rates for heart-failure patients, compared with a 2% increase among the Aetna heart-failure population that didn't have such contacts. Emergency room visits fell by 2% for such patients, compared with an increase of 47% for patients not in the program.
8	6324	2004	Aetna Inc. is taking steps to cut down the costs of healthcare by turning to medical experts. To rein in radiology costs, Aetna has hired radiologists to review requests by primary-care doctors for expensive magnetic resonance imaging and other scans. Aetna suspects that primary-care doctors often order unnecessary tests and that getting radiologists' input before ordering a test will help.
9	8062	2006	Remote patient monitoring lets fewer specialists provide more attentive care. The eICU technology, sold by Baltimore's Visicu Inc., lets hospitals leverage the scarce resources of specially trained intensive care doctors and nurses. A single physician and nurse can support bedside caregivers for more than 100 patients at once. According the Leapfrog Group, 54,000 people a year could be saved if every U.S. ICU case were co-managed by a specialist.
10	8071	2006	Hospitals are moving to cut dangerous lab errors through improved specimen collection and efficiency. At the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, two pathologists will review biopsies. Double reading of pathology reports can reduce errors because a second pathologist usually catches the mistake the first made. Policies such as this are only starting to be adopted in hospital labs.
11	8071	2006	Hospitals are moving to cut dangerous lab errors through improved specimen collection and efficiency. Each year, 300,000 patients with thyroid nodules are tested by inserting a needle into a growth and extracting cells. However, 25% of the time, the tests miss tumor cells and produce false negatives. In January 2005, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center began posting a pathologist at the bedside of patients undergoing a needle biopsy to evaluate the quality of samples. The hospital was able to drop the false-negative rate on malignant tumors to less than 5% and sharply reduce the number of patients who needed second biopsies.

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