{"id":546,"date":"2010-11-20T14:39:01","date_gmt":"2010-11-20T14:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=546"},"modified":"2010-11-20T14:39:01","modified_gmt":"2010-11-20T14:39:01","slug":"does-more-efficient-equal-more-productive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=546","title":{"rendered":"Does More Efficient equal More Productive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It is often assumed that efficiency and productivity are the same thing\u00a0–\u00a0and this assumption leads to the conclusion that if\u00a0we\u00a0use our resources more efficiently then\u00a0we will automatically\u00a0be more productive. This is incorrect.\u00a0The definition of productivity is\u00a0the ratio of what\u00a0we expect to get out divided by what we put in<\/em> – and the important caveat to remember\u00a0is that only the output\u00a0which meets expectation is counted\u00a0– only output that passes the required quality\u00a0specification.<\/p>\n

This caveat has two important implications:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Not all activity contributes\u00a0to productivity. Failures do not.
\n2.\u00a0To measure productivity\u00a0we must\u00a0define a quality specification.<\/p>\n

Efficiency is\u00a0how resources are used\u00a0and\u00a0is often presented as metric called utilisation<\/em> – the ratio of how much time a resource was used to how much time a resource\u00a0was available.\u00a0 So, utilisation includes time spent by resources\u00a0detecting and correcting avoidable errors.<\/p>\n

Increasing utilisation does not always imply increasing productivity:\u00a0It is possible to become more efficient and<\/strong> less productive by making, checking, detecting and fixing\u00a0more errors.<\/p>\n

For example, if\u00a0we\u00a0make more mistakes\u00a0we will have more output that fails to meet the expected quality,\u00a0our customers complain and productivity\u00a0has gone\u00a0down.\u00a0Our standard reaction to this situation is\u00a0to put pressure on ourselves\u00a0to do more\u00a0checking and to correct the erros we find –\u00a0which implies that\u00a0our utilisation has\u00a0gone up but our\u00a0productivity\u00a0has remained down: we are doing more work to achieve the\u00a0same\u00a0outcome.<\/p>\n

However, if\u00a0we\u00a0remove the cause of the mistakes then more output will meet the quality\u00a0specification and productivity will go up (better outcome with same resources); and\u00a0we also have have less re-work to do so utilisation goes down which means productivity goes up even further (remember: productivity =\u00a0success out divided by effort in). Fixing the root case of errors delivers a double-productivity-improvement.<\/p>\n

In the UK we have become\u00a0a victim of our own success – we have a population that is living longer (hurray) and that will present a greater demand for medical care in the future – however the resources that are available to provide\u00a0healthcare cannot\u00a0increase at the same pace (boo)\u00a0– so we have a problem looming that is not going to go away just by ignoring it. Our healthcare system needs to become\u00a0more productive.\u00a0It needs to deliver more care with the same cash –\u00a0and that\u00a0implies three requirements:
\n1. We need to\u00a0specify our expectation of required quality.
\n2. We need to measure productivity\u00a0so that we can measure\u00a0improvement over time.
\n3. We need to diagnose the root-causes of errors\u00a0rather than\u00a0just\u00a0treat their effects.<\/p>\n

Improved productivity requires improved quality and lower costs – which is good because we want both!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is often assumed that efficiency and productivity are the same thing\u00a0–\u00a0and this assumption leads to the conclusion that if\u00a0we\u00a0use our resources more efficiently then\u00a0we will automatically\u00a0be more productive. This is incorrect.\u00a0The definition of productivity is\u00a0the ratio of what\u00a0we expect to get out divided by what we put in – and the important caveat to … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Does More Efficient equal More Productive?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,18,22,24,30,32,43,44,49],"tags":[79,102,114,190,217,225],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-6m-design","category-finance","category-healthcare","category-improvementology","category-operations","category-productivity","category-why","category-three-wins-r","category-victimosis","tag-cost-effectiveness","tag-efficiency","tag-finance","tag-outcome","tag-productivity","tag-quality-metrics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}