This article was originally published in the March 2024 edition of Héma-Québec’s Magazine. All issues of the Magazine are available here.

Streamlining our processes for the greater good

Our teams at the Public Mothers’ Milk Bank are always on the lookout for ways to improve their processes

During a labour shortage, resources are limited, so is it even possible to keep striving for excellence and improved efficiency without overloading your teams? According to Héma Québec’s production and continuous improvement teams, the answer is “Of course!”

Seizing opportunities for improvement

In 2022, Félicia Jodoin, a continuous improvement specialist at Héma-Québec, worked on a project to maintain the Public Mothers’ Milk Bank’s annual production while saving time and materials. Just a few simple tweaks—that might seem minor at first glance—were made to the process, and the results were astounding.

“Our goal with this project was to continue meeting hospital demand for milk despite staffing shortages, which Héma-Québec is not immune to,” she says. “Only a dozen or so production team members are trained in processing mother’s milk.”

Before, when there was not enough staff, breast milk processing sometimes had to be delayed to allow for blood component production needs to be met. This meant staff ended up having to play catch up at the end of a cycle and work overtime to meet the annual production goal of 3,000 to 4,000 L of mother’s milk needed by the neonatal units Héma-Québec serves: “The challenge was to maintain production without increasing the workload for our already busy employees.”

Simple and effective solutions

To achieve this goal, the teams first improved the upstream workflow by doing things like divvying up tasks and fixing production equipment the day before and simplifying the documents for data entry.

The teams then reviewed the actual production processes, leaving no stone unturned. Together, they optimized the process of defrosting bottles of donated milk to prevent losses due to errant ice or spills during milk mixing. By defrosting the donated bottles just 15 minutes earlier, the loss rate dropped by 37 bottles a year! There were also some remarkable gains in efficiency made by optimizing the fill volume, freeing up eight workdays for three employees to work on other essential production tasks.

Streamlining our processes for the greater good

These may seem like trivial changes to day-to-day operations, but they directly fulfill the teams’ objectives. Héma-Québec is now able to reach the same annual production volume with less time and materials. By reducing processing losses, we’ve even been able to ease up on recruiting mother’s milk donors, which means lower testing and sampling costs.

Now that’s how you streamline for the greater good—and for the joy of all the little mother’s milk recipients!