County General Hospital discovered a problem in the turnaround time required to discharge a patient from a bed and admit a new patient, which in turn causes delays in the hospital operating room resulting in physician and patient dissatisfaction. The hospital initiated an improvement project to resolve the problem, initially focusing on one surgical unit, which had almost 3,000 patients in 1 year. The process employed by the project team included the following activities, activity times, and precedence relationships.

Activity Predecessor Time Estimates

(days)

Activity Description a m b a Describe the bed assignment process — 4 7 10 b Survey the nurses about the process a 6 12 15 c Establish bed turnaround target time b 2 5 8 d Study the process and determine where it is defective

a, c 5 7 11 e Identify the variables that affect turnaround time b 3 9 14 f Perform a statistical analysis of the variables e 4 6 10 g Analyze possible solutions

c, d, f 5 9 14 h Identify solution approach g 3 7 9 i Improve the process h 10 14 20 j Monitor and control process with statistical process control i 15 23 30 k Apply the improved process across the hospital j 12 18 25 Construct the network for this project, determine the earliest and latest activity times, and the critical path.

 LO.1