Reference no: EM132099075

This excerpt was extracted from an article in the New York Times. TWO years ago, the supply system at Seattle Children’s Hospital was so unreliable that Susanne Matthews, a nurse in the intensive care unit, would stockpile stuff — catheters in the closet, surgical dressings in patients’ dresser drawers and clamps in the nurse’s office. And she wasn’t the only one. “Nurses get very anxious when we can’t get our hands on the tools we need for our patients,” Ms. Matthews says, “so we grabbed them when we saw them, and stashed them away.” This, in turn, made the shortages more acute. On a busy day last month in the I.C.U., it took Ms. Matthews just a few seconds to find the specialized tubing she needed to deliver medicine to an infant recovering from heart surgery. The tubing was nearby, in a fully stocked rack, thanks to a new supply system instituted by the hospital early last year following practices typically used in manufacturing or retailing, not health care. There are two bins of each item; when one bin is empty, the second is pulled forward. Empty bins go to the central supply office and the bar codes are scanned to generate a new order. The hospital storeroom is now half its original size, and fewer supplies are discarded for exceeding their expiration dates. Please indicate which element of TPS is applied by Seattle Children’s Hospital as described in the second paragraph above, and point out how this element benefits the system. USE OWN WORDS.