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Your personal progress towards earning a Penn
State IMPROVE Certificate
First, in What you will learn about
Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) and the questions to ask
while looking for opportunities to IMPROVE.
Then, in So What you will experience
four different CQI initiatives at Penn State. For your convenience,
the four initiatives, stories, and teams are organized and presented
using Penn State's IMPROVE model.
Finally, in Now What you will be asked
to reflect on the four stories and think about ways to improve
the quality of your work within the Penn State community.
Click each part of the IMPROVE model to view
the questions that will be asked.
Identify and Select
Process for Improvement
- Whom do you serve? Who are your customers?
- What do they expect of the services you provide?
- What processes are in place to meet or exceed those expectations?
- Do you have information from your customers or co-workers
that indicates that some of the processes are not meeting expectations?
- Of those processes, is there a process that is manageable
in scope?
- Where is the "low hanging fruit"? In other words, which process
will give you the most improvement for your effort?
- Is there a group of people who know enough to improve this
process?
- Does your workplace welcome change?
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What are the steps you go through as you
provide that product or service?
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What is the order of steps from beginning
to end?
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Is there a time between the steps where nothing
is happening? (This is called a wait state.)
Prepare Analysis
of Process Development
1. Consider the following as you analyze process
performance:
- Are there unnecessary steps?
- Are there unnecessary layers of approval?
- Are there overlapping paper and electronic processes?
- Are multiple people responsible for the same task? Is
work being duplicated?
- Where does everything backup or slow down?
- Does the process take too much time?
- Do you have any information about how the process performs?
(ex., is the customer satisfied, how long does the process
take, how many people are involved in each step of the process?)
2. Now that you have more information, think again about your
process. Is it meeting needs and expectations? Could the process
be improved?
3. Now that you have analyzed the performance of the process:
- What is the problem?
- What are the causes?
- What are the effects?
Research and Develop
Solutions
1. Identifying possible solutions
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What actions are required to improve the process?
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Is there missing or incorrect information?
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Can you reduce wait time?
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Have you gathered ideas from others involved
in the process about how it can be improved?
2. Evaluating your possible solutions
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Are the solutions based on what you have
learned?
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Do the solutions address the causes?
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Have you thought about eliminating or redesigning
some of the steps in the process?
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Have you identified ways to try out each
solution?
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Do you know the costs and benefits of each
solution?
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How will the solutions improve the process?
Will the process be more efficient?
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How will you know when the process is improved?
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Will the improvement address customer concerns?
Organize and Implement
Improvements
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What steps need to be taken to implement
the solutions and how long will it take?
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Is there management support to move forward?
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Are additional resources (e.g., money, staff,
equipment) needed?
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What is the plan for follow-up once the solutions
have been implemented?
Verify and Document
Results
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Have the causes to the problem been eliminated
or decreased?
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Are there clear indicators of improvement?
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Have you asked your customers if they are
satisfied with the results of the improvements?
Evaluate and Plan
for Continuous Improvement
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Now that you have a solution in place, how
do you continue to evaluate and improve your process?
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Where are there other areas for improvement?
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What lessons have been learned about process
improvement?
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