Lean production represents a change in production system paradigm that calls for integration of the human and technological practices. This article reviews previous models of lean production that concentrated mainly on some distinct features of its philosophy, organization, and techniques and presents a framework of lean production as a sociotechnological system. The proposed framework provides...

BACKGROUND With health care costs continuing to rise, a variety of process improvement methodologies have been proposed to address the reported inefficiencies in health care delivery. Lean production is one such method. The management philosophy and tools of lean production come from the manufacturing industry, where they were pioneered by Toyota Motor Corporation, which is viewed as the leader...

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a fundamental role in the global economy. However, SMEs usually have different characteristics from larger enterprises, e.g., essential resource restrictions, lower performance, higher environmental impacts. This requires them to search for strategies be more competitive sustainable. A possible solution relies on introducing Lean-Green practices. ...

Manufacturing companies seek innovative approaches to achieve successful Green and Digital transitions, where adopting lean production is one alternative. However, further investigation required formulate the strategy with practical inputs identify what digital technologies could be applied which principles for environmental benefits. Therefore, this study first conducted a case in three collec...

PURPOSE The purpose of this article is to discuss the current state of implementation of Lean production in health care. The study focuses on the definition of Lean in health care and implementation process, barriers, challenges, enablers, and outcomes of implementing Lean production methods in health care. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH A comprehensive search of the literature concerning the im...

Over the past 10 years or so, lean manufacturing has been receiving an increasing amount of attention as one source for productivity improvements and cost reductions in manufacturing. Hailed by its proponents as a breakthrough means to analyze and improve production and the factory floor environment, lean manufacturing is a broad collection of principles and practices that can improve corporate...

Reducing wastes in the healthcare processes is crucial for developing a high performance health system. Adopted from the Toyota Production System (TPS), the Lean concept has emerged in recent years as a way of introducing innovative ideas to improve industrial processes. In the context of health care, Lean is considered as a continuous improvement model, which provides healthcare organization t...

Lean is today becoming increasingly popular in Swedish manufacturing industry, and the concept has also started to spread to other sectors, such as administration, healthcare and the municipal sector. However, previous studies have suggested that Lean can become “mean”, creating working conditions that are bad for the employees. Conversely, other studies instead suggest that this has less to do...

Lean Manufacturing concept is well described in the literature in the context of low-mix high-volume production. There are numerous case studies proving outstanding benefits of implementation Lean principles. Nowadays enterprises have to face the problem of high variety of products and dynamically changing demand. Lean tools and methods known from repetitive production do not always fit to high...