VSM Lesson 5: Establish Process Times

One of the most important measurements that you need to gather, and one that is often not available from existing data, is the time needed to complete each process. In a manufacturing environment time studies are common and expected, and establishing time standards for work is nothing new. In people-centric healthcare, however, the work is inherently more variable and less repetitive. People are not machines, and the time required to examine, care for and treat human beings, even for exactly the same procedure, will fall into a much wider range than other types of work. In this lesson we’ll examine the use of process times, how to collect them, and how to display them on our Value Stream Map.