Promoting lean management and healthy healthcare workers in nursing departments in Switzerland

More and more hospitals are introducing Lean approaches to counteract economic pressure and to increase their efficiency. Previous research shows that introducing Lean brings certain economic benefits for hospitals. However, studies also indicate a negative impact on employee well-being. In the project described in this chapter, we followed an innovative approach to implement Lean and simultaneously maintain employee well-being by offering specific workshops to address working conditions and employee health. The results of our evaluation showed partial success. In general, compared to the control group, the situation in the intervention group remained stable, whereas the control group, without workshops, experienced a deterioration of working conditions and health in the same period

Lean-Sigma for product improvement using the VoC for enhancing the product competitiveness

Managers are using metrics such as productivity, quality, and low costs, to reach their objectives and keep companies success; however, customer expectations in the twenty-first century are not only including deliveries on time, good quality, and low costs; but they are also looking for values such as long term commitment, strategic integration, and innovation as competitive values. For the mentioned conditions, today’s managers need to learn how to adapt to such challenges by using flexible methodologies that help them to integrate more qualitative requirements to the conventional metrics. For this challenge recently, Lean-Sigma has proven to be a flexible and adaptable methodology that can incorporate such requirements. For proving this concept, this chapter describes a case study in which the initial valuation of the metrics shows that a product has been delivered as expected with the quality and productivity values in the best levels. However, customer perception is different and product competitiveness is at risk, signals that the operations management presented as a priority requiring actions and a later solution. Using the Voice of the Customer (VoC) and Lean-Sigma, this study focuses on an operation framed in the automotive industry. The assembly process is the target in specific in the cutting step of rubber hoses, which have to measure different lengths depending on the product models. At first sight, with a production rate of 1000 pieces per hour, the 7 complains in a year look as expected for the variability in the process. However, the quality perception and confidence of the customer are at risk. Actions were taken and in two weeks the team incorporated the qualitative requirements to the operations’ quantitative targets and responded to the customer concerns and kept the product competitiveness. The adjustments and implementations results are reflected in the measured values at the cutting process, achieving an 80% reduction in the process’ variation, and an increment in the capability index (Ppk) from 0.97 to 1.97

Adapted lean thinking for healthcare services: an empirical study in the traditional Chinese hospital

This paper looks at how Lean Thinking can be adapted using a model derived from a case study of a large Traditional Chinese Hospital. After a restructuring in divisions and the implementation of the care programmers and clinical pathways, hospital management found that they had no tools to evaluate if these changes were resulting in a Lean Thinking approach on the work-floor. In agreement with hospital management, an existing tool of Business Process Reengineering measurement was adopted and adapted to the specific context of healthcare. This paper reports on how the quantitative model was changed and validated in order to come up with a useful instrument to measure the Lean Thinking of the employees in the hospital. The Hospital Lean Thinking (HLT) tool can be useful to measure the effects of changes that are assumed to lead to more Lean Thinking or even patient focus. In this way the pay-off of these investments can be made more tangible. The HLT tool offers hospitals a way to evaluate how they are evolving towards more Lean Thinking