In this paper we present the experience of a lean implementation in a Hospital. It all steamed out from a need to cut cost, and the focus on inventory reduction. The methodology adopted and the peculiarities of an implementation in a hospital are presented. A strong reduction in inventory has been achieved but, more important, broken processes which lead to excessive inventories have been identified so giving the possibility to remove the root causes and avoid having the problem again. Finally, one of the best results has been to make people in the hospital see differently about materials management activities: best and faster results, with less effort, are not achieved by batching (e.g. ordering 3 weeks consumption of a medicine needed) rather by standardizing activities and levelling orders and activities throughout the week (e.g. order every day all medicines consumed).
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
. Chase, R., Aquilano, N., Jacobs, R., 1998, Production and Operations Management: Manufacturing and Services, Irwin.
. Hill, T., 2002, Operations management, Palgrave.
. Johnston, B., Clark, J., 2002, Service Operations Management, Prentice Hall.
. Slack, N., Lewis, M., 2002, Operations Strategy, Prentice Hall.
. Womack, J, Jones, D., 2004, Lean thinking, Free Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Portioli-Staudacher, A. (2008). Lean Healthcare. An Experience in Italy. In: Koch, T. (eds) Lean Business Systems and Beyond. IFIP – The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 257. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-77249-3_50
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-77249-3_50
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-77248-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-77249-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)