Process improvement metrics for Mouse Cage WIP.

1The following two definitions of quality were evaluated: Fitness for Use via the customer’s assessment and Conformance to Specifications via regulations established by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals[28]. The following 5 levels of quality were defined as follows: Level 1, customer inspects; Level 2, company inspects; Level 3, work unit inspects; Level 4, self-inspection; Level 5, mistake proofing. At Seattle Children’s, our customer is the patient/family. At Seattle Children’s Hospital, our customer is evaluated for medical care in our clinics and operating rooms. At the Research Institute, our customer is interacted with only through research protocols approved by the human subjects Institutional Review board (IRB).These interactions are carried out by researchers and monitored, on behalf of the customer, by stakeholders such as researchers, the IRB and external funding agencies (e.g. the National Institutes of Health, NIH). In situations where animals are used in research, the customer’s stakeholders are researchers, the NIH, the IACUC, and the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC). Accordingly, in the context of caring for mice in our vivarium, a level 1 quality inspection could involve the NIH and/or the AAALAC. A level 2 inspection would involve the IRB and/or the IACUC. A level 3 quality inspection would be carried by the OAC in a manner consistent with its daily management system. A level 4 inspection would involve the individual OAC employee (e.g. an animal technician). In order to achieve level 5, the OAC’s daily management system and WIP boards would prevent any errors from occurring and ultimately deliver a defect-free product to its stakeholders.2The number of steps for each OAC employee is equal to 2. One person from the team then rolls up the numbers to a Visibility white board.3SharePoint 2003 lists, through its inherent Access database, provide mistake-proof mathematical operations of each OAC employee’s WIP numbers. The OAC team, at its daily huddle, provides the 2nd check step.