Using a Flowchart

Mrs. Alvarez encourages the team to solve this problem. Thinking back on her training, she remembers that the second step in solving a problem is to fully describe the problem to understand its causes and roots.

Many tools can be used to help the team describe the problem. Tools that the team will use include:

• flowchart
• moment of truth analysis
• client flow analysis
• indicator matrix
• table
• bar graph
• line graph
• histogram
• pie chart

The team decides to use a flowchart to analyze the process the users go through in using the health center's services, and to visualize when the waiting time occurs.

The team decides to observe the process of a user who comes to get health care from the health center. They will observe the user from his or her arrival in the center to his or her departure. Through a direct observation technique, they observe all the steps taken by the users in the health center.

The team draws the process that users follow from their arrival at the health center to their departure by putting each activity in a rectangle and each decision point in a diamond, and connecting all these rectangles and diamonds in order. The flow chart allows the team to replicate the steps each patient goes through.

The flow chart allows the manager and the team to visualize the process as it actually occurs in their health center and helps them to understand where and when they should make changes to reduce the users' waiting time. Later on, the team will conduct a Client Flow Analysis so they can obtain more detailed information about the amount of time users spend with each provider in the health center.