February 2, 2007

Administrative assistants use concepts from Toyota

Recently a small group of MGH administrative assistants simplified some of their more time-consuming tasks using a process improvement model developed by Toyota. The administrative assistant workgroup identified several barriers that made their day-to-day work difficult and then collaborated on ways to eliminate these obstacles.

Central to the Toyota method is the imperative that when workers encounter obstacles, they note and address these barriers rather than work around them. The workgroup is only one of many process improvement initiatives underway at the MGH.

"Like other process improvement teams, the administrative assistants workgroup found it surprisingly easy to identify ways to make their work easier," says Sally Iles, associate vice president for Medicine and Primary Care Services and coach for the workgroup. "Their solutions to some common problems will benefit other employees who do the same type of work."

One time-consuming and tedious task that the group tackled was the scheduling of meetings. Often, administrative assistants do not have their counterpart's name or contact information to schedule meetings for their managers. But, the Partners Phone Directory (PPD) lists the administrative assistants for all hospital personnel. Keeping this directory up to date can help to alleviate the problems around scheduling.

"The PPD can be a great source of information when scheduling meetings," says Amy Lynn Maysa, executive assistant. "It lists the administrative assistants as well as the hospital personnel they support, their location, title and contact information. We identified the need for all administrative assistants to update their own and their managers' information to help make scheduling an easier task."

To access and update contact information on the PPD, users can type in keywords "Partners Telephone Directory" into the URL address bar of any Partners computer. For more information about the process improvement initiative at the MGH, contact Iles at siles@partners.org.