DaytonDailyNews.com

DAYTON — When you deal with the gift of life, it's tough to think in terms of "production" and "manufacturing."

But to safeguard precious — and scarce — resources, leaders of Community Blood Center/Community Tissue Services had little choice.

To become more efficient, those leaders turned to Sinclair Community College's lean manufacturing experts last year. Donna Hoying, of Sinclair's Advanced Integrated Manufacturing (AIM) center, mapped out ways to cut waste and refocus on hospitals, which are the center's main customers, they said.

It comes down to being "good stewards," said Ann Lay, the center's process improvement director.

"We have to do what's right," Lay said.

The center seeks to ensure not only a steady supply of safe blood, but to provide grafts — body segments suitable for surgery — from deceased donors.

In 2006, the Dayton center provided 42,499 grafts. It is one of the five largest tissue processing banks in the United States by volume, said Rob Carpenter, the center's tissue processing director.

But few people become tissue donors — the center recovered 269 Dayton-area donors in 2006, and a total of 2,705 from its branches across the country.

And the center has little time — just 24 hours from time of death to complete graft recovery and do it in accord with a family's wishes.

That means pressure.

"The issue that drove us to that point is we could not keep up with demand," Lay said.

"Lean" methods helped increase productivity in the center's demineralized bone matrix operation by 63 percent. The operation provides bone shavings that can be used in dental and spinal surgery.

The lean approach eliminates "non-value-added" tasks. Carpenter defines those tasks as "anything the customer is not willing to pay for."

Lean methods also kept machines running longer — machines like the center's four band saws and two Computer Numeric Control (CNC) machines, which cut and shape bone and tissue donations.

The CNCs are like those found in any of the Dayton area's hundreds of tool shops. Can tissue center employees think of themselves as "manufacturers?"

"We are starting to," Carpenter said, adding: "We always remember that it (a donation) is a gift."

"When we've been gifted from these families, we take that responsibility very, very seriously," said Ken Blair, the center's recovery services director.

With a raft of record-keeping regulations to contend with, the center isn't finished with lean approaches. Center leaders plan to work with AIM next month on streaming paperwork flow.

"You can apply it (lean methods) to anything," Carpenter said.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.

Community Blood Center/

Community Tissue Services

Based: 349 S. Main St., Dayton.

Employees: 420 locally, 550 nationally.

Branch tissue centers:

Fresno, Calif.

Toledo.

Indianapolis and Connersville, Ind.

Philadelphia.

Medford and Portland, Ore.

Boise, Idaho (a satellite of the Portland center).

Fort Worth, Texas.

Memphis, Tenn. (affiliate)

By the numbers:

1,237,155: Tests performed on donated blood and platelets in 2006.

94,312: Total tissue grafts provided by all of the center's branch centers in 2006.

80,732: Blood (red cell) donations in 2006.

42,499: Tissue grafts provided by the Dayton center in 2006.

269: Tissue donors recovered by the Dayton center in 2006.