Due to increasing competition in the field of medical testing it has become prudent for Laboratorio De Analisis Argentina (LAA) to evaluate its process and identify strengths and weaknesses to improve the operations of their laboratories. An in-depth investigation into day-to-day, step-by-step breakdown of activities has uncovered where, and how LAA can achieve efficient operations. From the original collection of samples to the final step of communicating the test results to the patients, LAA has shown that they have created a process with numerous factors to success as well as room for improvement. The following is a flow chart representative of the steps of the process and the reliance each step has to other steps: While not …show more content…
Implied Capacity Utilization Implied Utilization = Capacity requested by demand/ available capacity Implied Utilization = Capacity requested by demand/ available capacity Implied Utilization = Capacity requested by demand/ available capacity
Processing 17.16% 36.38% 52.86%
Separation 25.21% 53.45% 77.68%
Distribution 9.56% 20.27% 29.45%
Testing 13.07% 27.72% 40.28%
Storage 8.82% 18.71% 27.19%
Communication 13.62% 28.87% 41.96%

The implied utilization expressed above once again reiterates that Separation causes a bottleneck due to the fact that it is the most utilized step. However, this table also shows that every step has the capacity to meet demand underneath minimum, average and maximum demands. The table indicates that no step capacity is too low to meet demand, or is over-utilized. This is evident by the fact that no percentage is above 100%.
The key factors for success for LAA will be its ability to better balance the process steps to reduce the bottleneck and meet demand to ensure that they meet their promise of results in 24 hours. Specifically, LAA must administer more staff to the separation process to increase the amount of samples the distributors carry to the next stages. Beyond the statistics, it is evident that separation needs to be more efficient because of the fact that on average, carts are only half-full when being distributed. Currently, the later stages of the process