Crittenton partners with OU for Lean senior design projects

Crittenton Hospital Medical Center has partnered with Oakland University for another round of Lean projects.

Six of Professor Bob Van Til’s Industrial Systems and Engineering students have worked with Crittenton as part of their senior design projects. For the semester-long project, students worked in the Emergency Department, working to find more efficient ways of operating.

The teams spent January observing Crittenton’s current processes. During February, they collected their data and worked to implement their new strategies for the hospital in March.

One of the projects was designed to look at the processes involved in radiology tests. This team included Kimmy Romstad, Michelle Tan and John Katona. These students examined the timeframe from when an order is placed for a test – such as an X-ray, CT scan or ultrasound – until the results are available for the physician.

By implementing Lean strategies, the team was able to reduce the non-value added time for an X-ray by 50 percent.

The second group of students, Jackie Sinishtaj, Darrin Desrosiers and Steve Nowinski, studied processes in Crittenton’s labs to reduce waste and cut time. The team worked together to create a pilot process and implemented new, more efficient processes to shorten the time it takes to collect samples in the labs.

As the semester comes to a close, both teams are working to analyze the data from their efforts and provide final reports of their outcomes.

For more information about Lean, visit oakland.edu/lean. For more information on OU’s Industrial and Systems Engineering program, please visit oakland.edu/ise.