Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): ISSC Six Sigma Networking Night 2014

Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) was honor to be invited by Dr. Rita Wan to attend International Six Sigma Council (ISSC) Networking Dinner again on 22 May 2014. We have four members attended the dinner and they were Mr. Peter Fung (Vice-Chairman, HKSQ), Dr. Aaron Tong (Former Chairman, HKSQ), Mr. Ivan Ng (Member, HKSQ) and I (Former Chairman, HKSQ).

Before the event, We took a photo with Dr. Rita Wan (Chairman, ISSC) (Middle) and Dr. CO Chan (President, ISSC) (Right 2nd)

We also took a photo with Dr. Mickey Li (Chairman, Shenzhen Association for Quality (SZQA)) (Left 2nd) and Dr. Jason Kong (Vice-Chairman/Marketing, ISSC) (Right 1st).

In the beginning, Dr. Rita Wan (Chairman, ISSC) introduced the ISSC and reviewed the activities in 2013. The ISSC is a non-profit making organization of quality practitioners and subject matter experts that saw the need for standardization in the Six Sigma field.

ISSC Building Blocks which contained six pillars to support the quality excellence were introduced. Then Dr. Wan briefed the structure of ISSC that was governed by the Examination Board & the Executive Committee. There were more than 900 Six Sigma Green & Black Belt professional certified by ISSC up to now. Then Dr. Wan introduced the coming ISSC seminar named “Implementation of Lean Six Sigma in a Global Logistics Company” on 14 Aug 2014.

Mr. Simon CHENG (Senior Manager, Training & Development, HA) was our guest speaker and his topic named “LEAN Journey in Hospital Authority”. Before start, Mr. Cheng asked if you tired, please indicated how tired in number of fingers. One finger meant very tired and five fingers meant full of energy. Most of us raised four or five fingers.

In the beginning, Mr. Cheng introduced the background of Hospital Authority (HA). They had 42 hospitals, 48 Specialist Out-Patient Clinics and 73 General Out-Patient Clinics with 70,000 staffs. Then he briefed 3 level healthcare structures in Hong Kong. Primary Care was clinic consultation. Secondary Care needed to stay in hospital and Tertiary Care needed to transfer to specialist. HA’s vision, mission and values were mentioned and shown in the following diagram.

“Why HA needed LEAN?” asked by Mr. Cheng. Then he explained some problems but not limited to the follows they faced as “Long waiting time”, “Overcrowded wards”, “Duplication of work”, “Safety issues” and “Lack of coordinated patient care”. So they employed LEAN Concepts and the key milestone of HA was briefed as following diagram. Moreover, he also explain how they from LEAN to WISER. WISER stated for We Innovate Services Excel Regularly.

Finally, Mr. Cheng shared some success cases below:
Improving the Waiting Time in Specialist Outpatient Clinic (SOPC) from 32 min to 21 min
Shortening Patient Discharge Time at Post-Anaesthetic Care Unit from 42 min to 32 min
Improving the Discharge Medication Process from 42 min to 32 min
Endoscopy Patients Staying in Hospital 7hrs to 3.5hrs
Reducing Procurement Lead Time by Introducing Express Lane upto 80%

At the end, Mr. Cheng concluded LEAN as “Learning & Sharing”, “Engage Staff”, “Additional resources” and “Not a fad”.

After the talk all guests took a group photo.

Ceremony photo of ISSC Six Sigma Black Belt awardees

Then Dr. Mickey Li (Chairman of SZAQ) gave a guest speech. He introduced the first National Six Sigma Award in China that was coordinated by China Association of Quality (CAQ).