Multivariate Six Sigma: A case study in an outpatient pharmaceutical care unit

Six Sigma strategies for process improvement are widely used in industry and manufacturing. The spreading tendency to gather process data about hospital activity is leading to an increase of process improvement projects in the healthcare context. The complexity of these databases requires upgrading the classical statistical Six Sigma toolkit. In this paper we present a Six Sigma project carried out in an Outpatient Pharmaceutical Care Unit at Hospital Universitario Doctor Peset in Valencia (Spain), where we illustrate the benefits of using latent variables-based models, specifically Partial Least Squares Regression (PLS), integrating them into the DMAIC phases of the project.