Page 374 - Design for Six Sigma for Service (Six SIGMA Operational Methods)

334 Chapter Ten

makes customers unhappy. It slows down the process, so it increases the
cost; it may also reduce the throughput, so it affects the cash flow neg-
atively. In the health-care industry, excessive waiting time may even cause
complications in a patient’s treatment. The bottleneck in the service process
is one of the leading causes of excessive waiting time; for example, in the
health-care industry, hospital bed availability is often the bottleneck for the
whole hospital. Average queue length in the service factory process is an
alternative measure for waiting time. Abandonment rate is the portion of
customers who go away due to excessive waiting time; it is also often used
as a performance measure.

Customer Service Quality
The customer service quality in this case has two components: one is the
quality of the service, and the other is the quality of customer–service
provider interaction. The quality of service is the quality of the service
product, that is, the service provided. In the health-care industry, the quality
of service includes the quality of the treatment, quality of the diagnosis,
and quality of the recovery. The quality of customer–service provider
interaction is mostly based on how happy the customer feels about the
service. It includes the politeness of and the facial expressions (e.g., a
smiling face) of the service provider, and even the tone of conversation.
The total experience and feeling of the customers during operator-
customer interaction is a very important part of process quality and
customer satisfaction.

Service Time
The total time that a customer spends in the service facility is called the lead
time. The lead time is the summation of service time and waiting time.
Waiting time is definitely a waste for both customers and service-providing
companies. Because in the pure service shop process the services provided
to customers are highly customized, the required service times vary greatly.
Achieving sufficient service quality has a higher priority than reducing
service time duration. However, the non-value-added waiting times should
be reduced to a minimum.

Throughput
Throughput is the rate at which a process produces its output. Higher
throughput in the pure service process usually means more customers are
served in a given time period. However, in the pure service shop process, the
complexity and required service time of each task varies greatly; the
throughput may not be “the more, the better.”