Lean Six Sigma from Penn State Great Valley Continuing Professional Education

Lean Six Sigma for Service Industries, Technology Groups, Health Care Sectors, Office Environments, and Manufacturing Business

Congrats to our newest graduates of the LEAN Six Sigma Program

From left to right: Dr. Kailasam Satyamurthy (instructor), Taryn Duckett, Jay Javie, Madeline D'Ancona, Steven Bellistri, Dr. Michael J. Piovoso (instructor), Werner Freyman Jr., Cathy Judge Cardillo, Lei Wang, Bill Stieber (instructor).

After a rigorous nine months of training, seven managers and directors at Mercy Health System (MHS) earned their black belts, the second highest level in Lean Six Sigma training, in Penn State Great Valley's Systems Approach to Quality Management in Health Care-Lean Six Sigma. The program is a business improvement model using statistical and analytical processes to eliminate waste and create an efficient system while engaging all team members in collaborative problem solving. Each graduate worked on an in-depth project supported by statistical and analytical processes—either individually or as part of a team. Some of the projects included improving the process between the time an admitted patient was transferred from the Emergency Department to an inpatient bed, eliminating false-positives in coding/documentation, minimizing the number of Nazareth orthopedic patients who did not use services provided by Mercy Home Health, implementing a Direct Admit process for physicians to use at Nazareth Hospital for non-emergent patients, and reducing misidentification in inpatient lab specimens. "Six Sigma is not just the flavor of the month," says Steven Bellistri, lab manager at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital. "Six Sigma is the way heath care is going to evolve; it has already begun."

Program Overview

Lean Six Sigma is a fundamental for continuous improvement in any Service industry, Technology group, HealthCare sector, Office environment, or Manufacturing business. This two-course program will provide students with the tools necessary to better position their company or organization to exceed their customers’ expectations in the areas of:

Improving your Services
Process Improvement
Information Flow
Quality Designs
On-time Delivery
Eliminating Waste
Product Flow
Team Work and Time Management

The process management and elimination of waste principles, offered throughout this series of courses, will provide increased customer satisfaction. Your company or organization’s financial performance will be positively influenced through that higher level of satisfaction.

The two-courses in this program blend the classroom experience with instructor led hands-on exercises. These exercises are designed to give the participants a series of tools that can be immediately applied in their workplace environment.

Who should attend

Each of these courses offers in-depth training on specific topics of Lean Six Sigma. They are targeted towards team members who currently or soon will be, responsible for applying these unique skills, in addition to those students who will be responsible for implementing continuous improvement processes and projects within their company or organization.

Tuition - $590 per course; each course meets 7 sessions (21 hours each)

Course Descriptions

Course 1 - Lean Six Sigma Theory and Application

This course will provide students with an introduction to Lean Six Sigma and the tool sets of Team Work and Time Management, Statistical Analysis, Elimination of Waste, and Process Management.

Sampling of topics covered:

The magnitude of improvement of progressing from a One Sigma to a Three Sigma to a Six Sigma company will be explained along with the philosophies of the Lean and Six Sigma gurus such as Deming and Crosby. The path to continuous improvement will be presented by explaining the proven approaches of DMAIC (Design, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) and PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) and the five fundamentals of Lean. Various tool sets such as, Visual Management, Value Stream Mapping, Kaizen, and Kanban will be demonstrated to show how to reduce waste. This course is taught in a computer lab where the mathematical concept of variance and its application to statistics is presented in an easy to understand format. The calculation of the standard deviation is introduced and tied to the philosophy of Six Sigma with an explanation of the magnitude of improvement each additional Sigma value has on customer satisfaction, quality and business performance. Statistical process control is also the focus of this session.

Prerequisites
Portions of this course are taught using Microsoft Excel and Mini-Tab in one of our computer classrooms. Students should have a basic understanding of algebra, trigonometry, and mathematics to utilize the functions in Excel and Mini-Tab. This portion of the course is not graded.

Course 2: Lean Six Sigma for Continuous Improvement

During this course, students will be introduced to the five techniques that will give them the tools to improve safety (the 6^th S), increase communications, enhance teamwork, improve morale, increase productivity, and decrease costs; all while adding value to their customer. In addition, to the tools presented, the material will offer a cross-functional approach that includes the disciplines of service, research, development, suppliers, manufacturing, marketing/sales and distribution. This process drives the voice of the customer all the way through the service sector or product development activities into the market place. Advanced Statistics and application of process improvement in the areas of Five S+1 and Quality Function Deployment, are also covered. This course will also review the methodology of Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) which has been an area of great interest to the Service industries, Technology groups and HealthCare sectors. FMEA is a systematic group of activities intended to:

Recognize and evaluate the potential failure of a service, product or process and the effects that failure can have.
Identify actions that could eliminate or reduce the chance of a potential failure occurring.
Document the entire process of FMEA.

Prerequisites
Course 2 (Lean Six Sigma for Continuous Improvement) requires completing Course 1 (Lean Six Sigma Theory and Application) or demonstrated experience with Lean Six Sigma. Portions of this course are taught using Microsoft Excel and Mini-Tab in one of our computer classrooms. Students should have a basic understanding of algebra, trigonometry, and mathematics to utilize the functions in Excel. This portion of the course is not graded.

Call 610-648-3281 for more information.

Fall Schedule

Course #	Course Title	Sessions	Times	Fall 2013
SYSEN 5606	Lean Six Sigma Theory and Application	7	6:00 - 9:00 p.m.	Wed., 8/28 - 10/9 $590
SYSEN 5605	Lean Six Sigma for Continuous Improvement Prerequisite: Lean Six Sigma Theory and Application or demonstrated experience with Lean Six Sigma	7	6:00 - 9:00 p.m.	Wed. 10/23- 12/11 (no class 11/27) $590
	Coming in spring 2014, a third course will fullfill requirements to earn a certificate.