Pharmacy staging: nine seconds a trip, an estimated 130 hours a year
My first process improvement happened before I knew the words for it. Moving a staging shelf saved about nine seconds per prescription. Counting how often that walk happened turned nine seconds into an estimated 130 hours a year.
The problem
My first enlisted job was pharmacy technician. After a pharmacy remodel, the staging area, where finished prescriptions waited for pickup, sat farther from the customer-service computer than it needed to. Every prescription meant a walk.
Baseline
I did not know Lean or Six Sigma. I counted the steps and timed the walk. Then I counted volume from the paper sign-in sheets, because I wanted to know how often the walk happened, not just how annoying one trip felt.
About 55 patients a day
About 4 prescriptions each, so about 220 trips a day
What was actually happening
Senior leaders and experienced staff designed the layout, and it worked. But one small piece of motion repeated hundreds of times a day. Each trip took only a few seconds, so nobody saw it as a problem.
Where it broke
The distance between two points every prescription touched: the staging area and the customer-service computer.
The change
We moved the staging area closer. Then I counted the steps and timed the walk again.
Result
Per trip: about 9 seconds saved (measured: steps counted and walk timed, before and after)
Per day: about 33 minutes saved (calculated: about 220 trips at 9 seconds)
Per year: an estimated 130 hours avoided (calculated: 33 minutes a day over about 237 working days, not directly clocked)
What I learned
Small changes to work that repeats are not small. Remove unnecessary movement from one repetition and the benefit repeats too. And measure how often something happens, not just how bad it feels once.
Method
Find where time disappears: waste, motion, and waiting. Then prove it worked with a before-and-after measurement. In EASIER terms: Ask what happens now, then Review what changed. See all six process guides.
Related free tools
The Friction Hunt finds the walks, waits, and repeats in your own day. The Before-and-After Review proves whether a change helped. Both are in the free EASIER toolkit. No email required.
This story also appears in my book, There Has to Be an Easier Way.
