Value Analysis is all about SCAMPER
If you aren’t using the techniques of SCAMPER to boost your value analysis savings and improve your quality, then I have a big savings idea to share with you today. Here’s what I’m talking about!
Value analysis is all about “the search for lower cost alternatives to meet your desired functions (primary, secondary and aesthetic) reliably”. Whereas, SCAMPER is a proven technique to help you reach this goal. That’s because every new idea is just an addition or modification to something that already existed which SCAMPER helps you flush out.
So if you can modify, adjust, or alter a product, service or technology you are buying you will dramatically increase your odds of coming up with new and better ideas that can save your money or improve your quality.
Here’s a mnemonic developed by Bob Eberle to help you remember the SCAMPER concept when you are applying it to your value analysis studies:
Substitute something: Replacing a disposable with a reusable.
Combine it with something: Adding it to a kit, tray or pack.
Adapt something to it: Add fax chips to PCs to eliminate fax machines.
Modify or Magnify it: Reduce the size, volume or bulk of an item.
Put it to some other use: Use gloves for ice packs (it’s been done).
Eliminate something: Removing items from kit, tray or pack.
Reverse or Rearrange it: Don’t use custom packs at all (it’s been done).
Simply put, the SCAMPER mnemonic is all about searching out new and better alternatives to what you are doing and what you are buying now and will force you and your VA teams to change your thought patterns. This in turn will change your thinking about how you can save money or improve your quality. It will open up whole new vistas and pathways that will give you and your VA teams surprising insights and ideas on how to save money in every corner of your healthcare organization.
Filed Under: Best Practices • savingsblog
