In many histology laboratories, manually intensive and error-prone manual tasks intersect with semi-automated processes. Bottlenecks are created at intermittent points between these semi-automated steps. Efforts at standardizing processes have helped streamline many manual steps. However, the use of standardization alone has failed to eliminate other troublesome bottlenecks and has not satisfactorily reduced variation, defects, and errors.
In recent years, productivity and quality management systems such as Lean and Six Sigma have been used in combination with increased automation as a system and process approach. This dynamic approach addresses the converging demands of economy, efficiency, staff shortages, and errors than working with standardization methods alone.
The following page provides some examples of how using these approaches, along with well-chosen automation and technology, has allowed improvement in many key areas for histology laboratories.
