High-level performance monitoring of the technical workflow, with the technical process as a whole and also broken down into work centres.

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Background Concepts and Definitions

• Single Piece Flow (SPF) refers to when the process has no constraints, indicating that it moves from one workstation to the next without batching.
• ‍Realistic/Target Goal refers to when the process has small batches and capacity constraints.
• Cycle Time refers to the actual elapsed time on progressing an item. It is measured from the start of the first task to the end of the last task. Cycle Time consists of Value-Add Time and Non-Value Add time
• ‍Value Add (VA) refers to the time used that adds value to the item. This includes any touch time the request is spent in the department.

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Performance Monitor Screen

Lab Days per Case

This chart presents the average actual lab days a request spends in the technical laboratory and compares it with the modelled outcome of Target Days and SPF Days.

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Performance by Work Centre

This series of charts map the actual and target cycle time across the different work centres. The closer in proximity between the actual and cycle time indicates that it is tracking closer to the target.  By breaking it down into specific work centres, you can easily identify the work centres that require more attention as it has a larger gap between actual and target cycle time.  

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Lab Value Add (VA) Percentage

Lab VA Percentage is calculated by dividing the VA time by the Cycle Time. This number represents the percentage of time the request was worked on when it was in the lab.  

The higher the VA% implies that the request is moving more efficiently through the department as a bigger proportion of the cycle time is adding value. A lower percentage indicates that the Cycle Time consists of a high proportion of non-value-add time where there is no change made to the item. This includes time-lapsed waiting to progress to the next Work Centre such as specimens waiting to be grossed and cassettes waiting to be sectioned.

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Value Add by Work Centres

This chart breaks down the average VA time by the work centres in minutes per case.

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