PRIORITIZING AND SELECTING SIX SIGMA PROJECTS: A MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION MAKING APPROACH IN HEALTHCARE INDUSTRYOver the last six decades, continuous quality improvement strategy has become a dominant element of strategic management efforts in a great variety of industries, including Fortune 500 companies. Research shows that the success or failure of delivering expected outcomes in Six Sigma projects may relate to the quality of project prioritization and selection methods and processes. In general, the majority of the organizations implementing Six Sigma, with a pure subjective approach, have no systematic project selection methodology involved in their Six Sigma activities.
Given the complex nature of Six Sigma project prioritization and selection processes, multi-criteria decision making methods with multiple objectives may help increase probability of selecting right projects in business organizations. Within this context, the goal of this paper is to develop a methodology in which alternative Six Sigma projects are prioritized and selected using appropriate MCDM methods in healthcare organizations. You can contact me if you are interested in taking a role in this project. NSF REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) Site Project Proposal
Project title: Collaborative Research: REU Site Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Big Data Analytics in Healthcare
The proposed REU Site will build an interdisciplinary and interinstitutional collaborative research project for undergraduate students. REU Site goals are: 1) to enable students to research the dynamics of healthcare management systems and to analyze and understand the role of the Big Data concept in decision making processes in the healthcare industry; and 2) to analyze the cost, quality, and reliability of care provided by U.S. hospitals, as well as the complex and multifaceted relationships among the variables that affect the cost, reliability, and quality of healthcare in the U.S. Students will learn to apply various statistical analysis and machine learning methods to analyze large data sets. The proposed REU Site will recruit students from various disciplines including Business Administration, Industrial and Systems Engineering, Economics, Public Health, Health Informatics, and Statistics. REU students will work for 10 weeks each summer. Students will be selected using the recruitment plan and will be expected to have taken prior courses in basic and advanced mathematics, statistical analysis, and data analytics. We envision the proposed REU Site as a springboard for advanced research opportunities, particularly for students in traditionally non-research I institutions and underrepresented groups. This project proposal was submitted to NSF REU Site program on 8/25/2021. We hope to hear about the evaluation process soon. VACCINE SUPPLY CHAIN SYSTEMS: A DEVELOPING AN OPTIMIZATION MODEL USING OR/MS/OM APPROACH
Although the interest in the literature on vaccine supply chain systems has grown over the last decades, COVID-19 vaccine supply chain requires a unique attention among the OR/MS/OM community because of its particular position in the global healthcare system. First, the project focuses on reviewing the literature on vaccine supply chain systems and aims to answer the following questions: 1) What have the previous studies in the literature analyzed and found in the vaccine supply chain systems? 2) What are the unique components of the vaccine supply chain systems in COVID-19 vaccination process? Second, the project focuses on developing multiple optimization models using a great variety of variable sets that are impactful on designing the vaccine chain systems.
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THE LITERATURE REVIEW OF SIX SIGMA PROJECT SELECTION PROBLEMWhether the organization has a systematic method in which the right projects are appropriately prioritized and selected in DMAIC substantially impacts the overall success of the Six Sigma strategy.
The history of Six Sigma has shown that many large size organizations such as Motorola, Honeywell, Pratt & Whitney, Allied Signal, 3M, DuPont, American Express, Bank of America, Dow Chemical, Samsung, Kodak, Boeing, Toshiba, Sony, Texas Instruments, Bank of America, Johnson & Johnson, and General Electric benefitted from Six Sigma practices. Among those organizations, Motorola and GE took the role model position to implement Six Sigma as a corporate strategy. Although Six Sigma initiatives extensively emerged in manufacturing industry, service industry, particularly healthcare industry, developed a significant interest in Six Sigma over the last decades. This research project will review existing Six Sigma selection approaches and analyze what methods were integrated into Six Sigma selection problems. You can contact me if you are interested in taking a role in this project. MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS OF READMISSION AND LENGTH OF STAYDue to the fact that approximately 45% of the healthcare budget is spent by hospitals in the U.S., hospitals must strive to reduce cost without loss of quality. Hospital effectiveness is measured by hospital charges, LOS, and readmission rates.
On one hand, reducing LOS has been considered a high priority for hospitals over the last decades in the U.S. healthcare system because avoidable hospital stay may expose patients to nosocomial infections, medical errors, or excessive costs. On the other hand, stakeholders of the healthcare system concerned that shorter LOS might be associated with prolonged LOS in rehabilitation facilities and increased risk of being readmitted and postoperative morbidity. Given the nation-wide pressure for minimizing hospital LOS in the U.S., the aim of this study is to identify if early discharge has resulted in increased rates of unplanned readmissions and there is any relationship between LOS and readmissions. This project is open to undergraduate students. You can contact me if you are interested in taking a role in this project. PATIENT SAFETY PROJECT PRIORITIZATION AND SELECTION PROBLEM
Similar to quality improvement projects, prioritizing and selecting appropriate patient safety projects and allocating appropriate resources to those projects are the two critical success factors in healthcare organizations. Whether the organization has a systematic method through which the right projects are appropriately prioritized and selected substantially impacts the overall success of patient safety initiatives.
All patient safety projects cannot be conducted in the same time period and limited resources cannot be equally allocated to potential projects. Considering all resource constraints, organizations should develop a strategy to prioritize and select a subset of the potential projects in a portfolio or individual projects. Within this context, the goal of this project is to develop a methodology through which alternative patient safety projects are prioritized and selected using appropriate MCDM methods in healthcare organizations. You can contact me if you are interested in taking a role in this project. |