Lean Laboratory Principles for Balances

Lean laboratory principles are increasingly being applied to the laboratory environment, with the aim of increasing quality and efficiency. One important aspect is "Jidoka," a Japanese lean manufacturing term, which means empowering machines or operators to stop production automatically upon discovering a defect in a process. Applying these lean laboratory principles involves:

• Stopping a process as soon as a problem is detected (to avoid propagating errors through the workflow)
• Fixing the problem quickly (to avoid delays)
• Investigating the root cause of the problem
• Taking steps to avoid any reoccurrences of the same problem

If a problem is detected, the "First-Defect-Stop" procedure should be triggered. The aim of First-Defect-Stop is to enable a laboratory technician to stop the process, identify a problem, and resolve it within 10 minutes (e.g., using a checklist). If the problem cannot be resolved quickly or easily, they should escalate the issue (e.g., notify a supervisor or 3^rd party service provider).

The ultimate goal, of course, is not only to solve the problem once but to address the cause and eliminate it in order to prevent the error from recurring. Repeatedly ignoring the root cause of the problem is foolhardy, because it simply leads to inefficiency and further errors downstream, causing inaccurate results, poor reproducibility, and extended lead times.