Three teams earned awards for their cost-cutting prowess at the American Society for Quality’s World Conference on Quality & Improvement on May 18. Baxter Healthcare’s Value Stream Team earned the top prize, the Gold Award, in the conference’s International Team Excellence Competition. The eight-member team used lean techniques and value-stream mapping to remove waste from the production of one-liter saline solution bottles, a project that resulted in drastically reduced inventory at all stages of production, a 71-percent reduction in production time and product release time, and a 25-percent reduction in required processes. It also reduced work-in-progress by 30 percent.

 …