Continual improvement process concept

The first major release— ISO 9000 1994— was built around the concept of Document what you do, do what you document, and be prepared to prove it . Its replacement—ISO 9000 2000— is based on a management model that can be summarized as Plan, Do, Check, Act. The updated standard also incorporates customer needs and feedback and a continual improvement process. 

Some key human factor issues remain overlooked or ignored by healthcare leaders. Continuous improvement processes always shift the focus from individuals to teams, processes, or systems. The concept known as migrating decision making permits a person with greatest expertise (regardless of rank) to make an important decision. Finally, managing complexity of patient care can and often does exceed the capabilities of individuals. 

The continual improvement process the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) concept... 

The aim of the OHSMS, in accord with the PDCA concept, is clearly established To provide a management tool to reduce the risk of occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. Each continual improvement process is an integral part of the system... 

This chapter first discusses how to set about prioritizing your integration efforts, then how to develop integrated systems and build the concept of continuous improvement into your systems. A section is also provided on the various tools that might be used in the process. Lastly, there is a section on how to approach integration if you are dealing with informal existing systems. This section will not apply to all readers. 

The continuing search for technical and economic improvements in the coal gasification areas has provided incentives to develop newer process concepts starting in 1979. The Joint Program for 1979 includes processes in the Process Development Unit (PDU) stage of development which promise technical and/or economic improvements. Gasification processes included in the 1979 program are ... 

To ensure that this team concept is institutionalized and for its continuous improvement, the PAT Team process will be under the FDA s Quality Systems Framework. This should also help in ensuring quality and consistency of reviews, inspections, and other regulatory activities. 

Tlie growth in both variety and scale of gas-phase adsorption separation processes, particularly since 1970. is due in part to continuing discoveries of new porous, high surface-area adsorbent materials (particularly molecular sieve zeolites and. especially, to improvements in tlie design and modification of adsorbents. These advances have encouraged parallel inventions of new process concepts. Increasingly, the development of new... 

The systems approach providers a conceptual framework for organizing knowledge about states of consciousness and a process for continually improving knowledge about the structures/subsystems. The ten subsystems sketched in chapter 8 are crude concepts at this stage of our knowledge and should eventually be replaced with more precise concepts about the exact nature of a larger number of more basic subsystems and about their possibilities for interaction to form systems. 

The scope of this book is intended to be globally applicable, and the concepts and approaches will be useful to all companies seeking to continuously improve their process safety performance. However, many of the references and examples are based on U.S. conditions and programs. 

On the other end of the temperature scale, we shall see an expansion of the program of transporting normally solid products in the form of high-temperature liquids. This improves the handling costs on both ends and moves us closer to the continuous process concept. 

To illustrate the concept of combining analytics to improve process understanding an example chemical reaction was run using a Cellular Process Chemistry Systems (CPC) continuous feed micro reactor. This microreactor is configured to operate as a small-scale chemical production plant. It has two reactant input lines and two solvent/wash lines. The thermally controlled microreactor block of the continuous feed reactor has a total internal volume of 50 pL. The reactor system contains active control for both temperature and feed rate of the two reactants. The system flows product from the microreactor block to a residence time module (12 mL volume) and then out of the reactor for product collection and work-up. 

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