Welcome to our new community readers and contributing members. This is the first of our Community newsletters for the year, and the first to be published after a long spell.
Whilst our site development and content may not have moved along in the last year at the pace we desired, nontheless progress has been made and the Site continues to evolve. This is all part of the original charter and "Master Plan" - using continuous improvement and our learnings to evolve over time. We certainly have stuck to our vision of simplicity in our design. The intention of maintaining design simplicity, elegance and practical layouts, faciltates openness, clarity and honesty in our objectives. I'm not sure we see that in many complex and sophisicated sites, that are heavilly veneered with trinkets and driven by hidden objectives.
Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a versatile Lean tool in both the manufacturing and service industries. It has been successfully applied to just about every industry, including health services. It also combines very effectively with Six Sigma tools and methods to improve process capability, as well as output product quality and stability.
Unfortunately, there are many ways to apply VSM and most of us struggle to appreciate its power and versatility. Here's a simplied approach for using a Value Stream Maps to improve individual health, (and without the taktzeit).
No matter how big or small the business, it is fair to say that most companies are relying more and more on complex Information Technology infrastructure. The capacity, power and communication capability are growing at rates that could barely be comprehended 20 or 30 years ago. Add to this the dynamics and innovation of global competition, not only in services and product delivery, but also in operations support techniques, then it is little wonder that any sub-standard Operations Management model is at risk of crippling an otherwise viable enterprise.
The foundation to a succesful and sustainable Operations Support team lies with the diligent selection of the right IT Operations Manager, plus the clear, detailed, well planned and unequivocal role description by which he or she is directed on a daily basis. "Making it up as you go" will not cut it any longer.
Statistical Process Control (SPC) is the widely recognised method for analysing and monitoring process capability. It is entrenched in the continuous improvement methodology of Six Sigma and other Quality Management philosophies, and provides a pratical, visual approach for evaluating both input and output CTQ (Critical to Quality) indicators.
Whilst Six Sigma employs a number of statistical methods (such as Control Charts and Pareto analysis) to improve production efficiencies and achieve process stability, SPC can employ any number of analytical and graphical techniques to achieve quality objectives.
January 2014 has been another very productive month in the QualityHelp community, and start of a great year we believe. This month has followed on from December, where the team has focused on site improvements - some visible whilst others are in the underlying infrastructure. The inegration of all our fields of ineterest into one subdomain certainly will provide the freedom to increase productivity in this new year.
We've enhanced all the article teasers by allowing a small imbedded thumbnail. The site has been designed to be sparse with graphics on the front page. Where we use front page graphics, they should all be consistent in size and alignment.
We have a blog on our site design, where we continue to review and discuss the evolving Drupal technology and modules, as well as possible enhancements.
We've now made the live Healthtracker Dashboards (and Reports) internal, meaning that only logged-in users nd members will see them on the Dashboards Register. This is what you would expect on an extranet site and training portal, where the site infrastructure and page-type filtering can be used to publicise selected content only.
Having said that, we will continue to update the sample tracker dashboard, to reflect any enhancements to the healthtracker tool and its reports.
The Six Sigma Health Tracker has been given a major overhaul in version 5. It now includes a new Tab for analysis and Health Improvement planning. This rounds off the tool by also generating a Pareto chart. The Reports generated (by printing the complete workbook) produces a 5 pages of trending statistics, data and plans.
We've enhanced all of our Register Views, to make them more functional and user-friendly. The sort options are also no more widely used and consistent. We think the "No of Views" column might be of interest to readers.
We recently extended the News Update block (Top right of Home Page), to include ready access to Reports and DashBoards. We've been playing around with the concept of DashBoards for some months now. Many of you will know how DashBoards are a valuable and sensible team engagement tool, that has been heavily promoted by the Six Sigma methodology for improving process capability.
The Quality Help Community is a collaborative network of IT professionals with an interest in Quality Management and Quality Assurance based solutions in the IT industry. With collective participation, we hope to demystify Quality Management and it's effective application within the IT services and support industries.
Our Vision at QualityHelp is to guide IT support folk in the principles and value of quality management through team involvement and sharing.
Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a versatile Lean tool in both the manufacturing and service industries. It has been successfully applied to just about every industry, including health services. It also combines very effectively with Six Sigma tools and methods to improve process capability, as well as output product quality and stability.
No matter how big or small the business, it is fair to say that most companies are relying more and more on complex Information Technology infrastructure. The capacity, power and communication capability are growing at rates that could barely be comprehended 20 or 30 years ago. Add to this the dynamics and innovation of global competition, not only in services and product delivery, but also in operations support techniques, then it is little wonder that any sub-standard Operations Management model is at risk of crippling an otherwise viable enterprise.
Statistical Process Control (SPC) is the widely recognised method for analysing and monitoring process capability. It is entrenched in the continuous improvement methodology of Six Sigma and other Quality Management philosophies, and provides a pratical, visual approach for evaluating both input and output CTQ (Critical to Quality) indicators.