There are several reasons why it is important to assess the satisfaction of the population with the quality of medical services. Satisfaction is an indicator of the quality of medical care that can be used to make health prediction. In addition, patient satisfaction is connected with the organizational aspects of hospitals. Gaining access to the results of the satisfaction assessment is essential for identifying problems and developing an action plan. The regression model, built to look for factors that are associated with patient satisfaction, includes such factors as patient expectation and the impact of treatment on health, personal experience with nurses and doctors, incorrect treatment, waiting time, organization, pain relief, age, and education (Reychav et al., 2019). The control of the above factors will help medical organizations evaluate the quality of individual hospitals and benchmarking and enhance the ability to plan quality improvement strategies and meet patient expectations. In addition, it will allow obtaining more objective results of assessments by building models that will regulate the influence of factors and reduce errors.
One of the most important strategies for managers should be to improve patient satisfaction. The fact is that the competitiveness of the organization follows from this, because patients bring profit and authority. One of the key priorities of the management should be a deep analysis of all possible errors and shortcomings in the activities of the company (Reychav et al., 2019). This will help not only save money and improve credibility, which is a consequence of the absence of mistakes and shortcomings, but also allow to occupy leadership positions in a niche (Reychav et al., 2019). It is necessary to research what specific strategy can effectively solve the existing problems.
The Lean Six Sigma model can become a quality tool for managing and modernizing an organization. The Six Sigma philosophy is based on an approach of continuous process improvement and defect reduction. A continuous improvement and process improvement approach must be implemented in the organization (Tannenbaum & Salas, 2020). Improvement can be made through radical changes or through small continuous improvements, which is called the kaizen approach. The goals of improvement at Tom Shoes should be to improve quality, shorten the production cycle, improve jobs, and reduce costs. To increase the proportion of good products, for a given tolerance field, managers should strive to reduce the value of sigma, thereby increasing the number of them fit within the tolerance field.
Key elements that management should pay attention to at this point in time to avoid forced unnecessary costs for the company:
- Consumer satisfaction. Consumers determine the level of quality of work. They expect high quality products, reliability, adequate price, timely delivery, premium service. Hidden in each element of consumer expectations are quality requirements (Mann & Warren & Westbrook, 2019). The organization must identify and meet all these requirements.
- Define processes, their indicators and methods of process management. In order to improve the quality of work it is necessary to look at the processes from the consumer’s point of view. All elements of processes that do not bring value to the customer must be eliminated.
- Teamwork and employee involvement. The results of an organization are the work of its employees. In order to achieve high quality, each employee must be motivated to work and have a vested interest in achieving high results (Mann & Warren & Westbrook, 2019). Employee commitment leads to greater customer satisfaction.
Since the organization is financially unstable, it is worth paying attention to work with loans and credits, as the analysis revealed that the company is dependent on borrowed sources of funds and is not able to conduct its activities independently. To reduce accounts payable and increase accounts receivable, the following solutions are proposed: increasing the efficiency of working capital, refinancing of funds, introduce a system of discounts and penalties and carry out a strict selection of the client base. The final step is to introduce a system of control of accounts payable and receivable.
Improving the efficiency of working capital can be achieved by influencing the manufactured products, planning system and organization of production, which is achieved by constant monitoring of the standards and the dynamics of the actual unit costs. The factoring operation allows the company to refinance most of the accounts receivable in a short period of time, thereby reducing the duration of the financial and operational cycle (Skelton & Pais, 2019). Constant control over the timing of accounts payable will allow for timely payment of debts and avoid overdue payments and penalties, which is an inefficient use of company funds.
The main plan of action is to highlight the stages of Six Sigma implementation in production, having previously performed actions to reduce accounts payable. The method of designing The Six Sigma concept itself in the industry is called the DMADV (Define, Match, Analyze, Design, Verify) method:
- Define – in this step, the goals of the new process are defined with customer requirements in mind. A six sigma project team is created to design the process (Bruce, 2020).
- Match – the team develops and defines a set of specifications on the basis of which the process objectives can be determined.
- Analyze – the characteristics of the process being designed are analyzed and preliminary versions of the process execution are developed (Bruce, 2020).
- Design – during this step, detailed specifications of the new process are created and implemented in the organization (Wheeler, et al., 2020).
- Verify – in this step, the Six Sigma process design team verifies that the process meets its objectives based on the defined characteristics.
One of the important elements of The Six Sigma methodology is process management, because very often in an organization there is a simultaneous improvement of existing processes and design of new ones. Managing ever-changing processes becomes quite a challenge. The implementation of The Six Sigma in any organization is built on the constant work of project teams. Groups are formed by management levels, and there are three stages – the highest level of management, the process and the task (Antony, 2020). The teams are comprised of specialists with varying degrees of “mastery” of The Six Sigma concept (Antony, 2020). Based on the foregoing, it follows that it is precisely this methodology that is able to maximize the efficiency of a medical enterprise without losing the existing advantages.
In order to visually consider possible forecasts for a medical organization, it is necessary to refer to the fish skeleton diagram. It can be clearly seen which steps for management are the most important, as well as what tasks they consist of. The overall implementation of all steps and tasks will lead to the achievement of the goals set by the corporation and will increase efficiency. To draw up a diagram, it is necessary to take into account what exactly the organization plans to change in its own activities and set reasonable deadlines. By analyzing the implementation of The Six Sigma, certain specialists should be found in this field for the successful implementation of the project. Then a certain amount of time should be spent on the analysis of each area of the organization and its critical analysis. The totality of the tasks described above for the management and their successful implementation will lead to the fulfillment of the originally set goal. The same approach should be used in other aspects of improving the performance of the organization.
References
Antony, J. (Ed.). (2020). Lean Six Sigma in higher education: A practical guide for continuous improvement professionals in higher education. Emerald Publishing.
Bruce, K. (Ed.). (2020). Handbook of research on management and organizational history. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Mann, R. J., Warren, E. & Westbrook, J. (2019). Comprehensive commercial law. 2019 statutory supplement. Wolters Kluwer.
Reychav, I., Azuri, J., McHaney, M. E., Moshonov, R. & McHaney, R. W. (Eds.). (2019). Impacts of information technology on patient care and empowerment. IGI Global.
Skelton, M. & Pais, M. (2019). Team topologies. Organizing business and technology teams for fast flow. IT Revolution Press.
Tannenbaum, S. & Salas, E. (2020). Teams that work. The seven drivers of team effectiveness. Oxford University Press.
Wheeler, A. R., Baur, J. E., Halbesleben, J. R. B. & Buckley, R. M. (Eds.). (2020). Research in personnel and human resources management. Emerald Publishing.