Improvement of Blood Donating Process in Blood Bank and Transfusion Medicine Unit, Songklanagarind Hospital

Abstract

This research aims to improve the process in the blood donation process, by reducing wastes measured in terms of time and cost. The preliminary study presented that the donation process has non-value-added activities including waiting, over-processing and transportation. An application of the lean manufacturing concept was applied to reduce wastes by identifying the source of wastes and leading to the elimination and/or reduction of non-value add activities. Based on the analysis using the value stream mapping and the cost analysis, the wastes were discovered and they can be improved with the suitable work method established upon the ECRS principle. The results showed that the aforementioned types of waste in the blood donation process were decreased. The total process time reduced from 57.20 minutes to 53.85 minutes, or decreased by 5.86%. The total lead time reduced from 10.07 minutes to 1.97 minutes, or decreased by 80.43%. Moreover, it can be made the cost savings of 1,133,276 baht per year, according to the use of only a brand of platelet bag for single-donor platelet collection.