PURPOSE The purpose of this paper is to contribute toward a deeper understanding of the new roles, responsibilities, and job characteristics of employees in Lean healthcare organizations. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH The paper is based on three cases studies of healthcare organizations that are regarded as successful examples of Lean applications in the healthcare context. Data were collected ...

BACKGROUND Fat mass is variably associated with bone mass, possibly due to differential mechanical and biological effects of fat mass. We examined the association of fat mass with bone mass in a lean population. OBJECTIVE To investigate association between hip bone mineral density and fat and lean mass in a cross-sectional study from southern India. DESIGN The Andhra Pradesh Children and Pa...

Objective. The present study was designed to compare serum levels of apelin between lean PCOS women and healthy women with regular menses. Study Design. A total of 30 lean patients with PCOS and 30 healthy subjects were included in this study. Serum apelin levels were compared between groups. Results. Serum apelin levels in lean PCOS patients were not significantly different from the control su...

This paper presents a newly defined set-based concurrent engineering process, which the authors believe addresses some of the key challenges faced by engineering enterprises in the 21 century. The main principles of Set-Based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE) have been identified via an extensive literature review. Based on these principles the SBCE baseline model was developed. The baseline model ...

The aim of this paper was to empirically investigate what aspects that gave rise to positive and negative reactions among employees in Swedish companies that introduced Lean Production, and how they perceived their work. Two Swedish production plants that had introduced Lean Production 2-6 years before this study were chosen. Deep interviews with 19 bluecollar workers were performed. Continuous...

Lean construction is a new type of management mode of construction project, which is especially suitable for those complex, changeable and speedy construction projects. Besides, building information model (BIM) is “computable digital information” created and utilized during the design and construction of buildings. This paper takes construction project as the object and combines BIM technology ...

This paper assembles some principals from three strands of thought: lean theory; ethnomethodology; and Wittgensteinian philosophy. These are considered with a view to their impact on research design and used here as a basis for an initial exploration of a candidate research topic, in order to illustrate this impact. Principles of Lean Theory are considered, along with those from Wittgensteinian...

In recent decades, there has been a rise in the use o lean production model techniques. Through this approach, companies become more flexible, a fact that increases the interest in studies regarding the introduction of this model in businesses and its impacts on working conditions. Important observations concerning ergonomics, such as the theme of work activity regulation, have been highlighted...

BACKGROUND Emergency departments (EDs) face problems with overcrowding, access block, cost containment, and increasing demand from patients. In order to resolve these problems, there is rising interest to an approach called "lean" management. This study aims to (1) evaluate the current patient flow in ED, (2) to identify and eliminate the non-valued added process, and (3) to modify the existing...