September 2009

Service staff learn in a manufacture environment

In an Australian first, a worldwide manufacturing company has joined with the Department of Health in offering internships to health service redesign staff.

These internships are an initiative of the Department’s Redesigning Hospital Care Program, a four-year statewide program that aims to deliver significant health system improvements through applying process redesign methodologies in Victorian public hospitals.

The two-week internships are part of the program’s commitment to supporting health service redesign staff to develop the knowledge, skills and tools required to effectively manage process redesign.

Senior Facilitator in the Redesigning Care Unit at Alfred Health Francisco Lopez and Jane Gilchrist, an Improvement Manager from Melbourne Health, were selected to take part in an internship at Autoliv Australia.

The company is a leader in automotive safety and develops, manufactures and supplies safety systems, including airbags, steering wheels, seat belt devices and seating systems.

It is also a leader in the application of Lean Thinking and has recently received an award from Toyota for being the best Toyota Production System implementer in Australia.

Mr Lopez was involved in an improvement activity in steering wheel assembly, identifying ways to make the delivery of materials more reliable and streamlined.

Ms Gilchrist measured the work content time of a seat belt production cell with the aim of balancing the workload to equalise team members’ tasks.

They sat in on daily multidisciplinary production meetings and attended weekly senior management ‘walk arounds’ focusing on indicators, quality issues and monitoring continuous improvement activities.

‘We learned how empowered and improvement-focused the production teams can be when they are equipped with clear goals, metrics and indicators and when multidisciplinary resources and energy are aligned to support their work,’ Mr Lopez said.

All work areas were clearly labelled and relevant performance indicators were readily accessible so staff could review past performance as well as update performance daily.

‘We observed the discipline of staff in maintaining a clean, tidy and safe work environment and saw how effective the immediacy of visual management can be,’ said Ms Gilchrist.  

Many things learned from Autoliv Australia could be applied to health services, the pair said.

Further opportunities for redesign staff at health services to develop knowledge and skills through the internship program will be offered in the future.