Background: There is growing interest in applying lean thinking in healthcare, yet, there is still limited knowledge of how and why lean interventions succeed (or fail). To address this gap, this in-depth case study examines a leaninspired intervention in a Swedish pediatric Accident and Emergency department. Methods: We used a mixed methods explanatory single case study design. Hospital perfor...

High quality craft manufacturers adapting industrialized approaches to design and manufacturing face the challenge of maintaining the unique quality in their craft manufacturing while realizing improvements in efficiency through their industrialization process. We studied how quality is ensured and built into the products of one highly industrialized lean manufacturer and one craft manufacturer...

Lean principles were originally developed in industrial operations as a set of tools and practices that managers and workers could use to eliminate waste and inefficiency from production systems—reducing costs, improving quality and reliability, and speeding up cycle times. Toyota Motor pioneered lean practices, and much of their allure today stems from the fact that the phenomenal performance ...

Nowadays many companies are undergoing organizational transformations in order to meet the changing market demands. Thus, in order to become more competitive, supply chains (SC) are adopting new management paradigms to improve SC performance: lean, agile, resilient and green (LARG paradigms). The implementation of new production paradigms demands particular care with the issues related with Hum...

This article serves as a resource to factory home builders seeking to use lean thinking to slash waste from their production operations. Lean refers both to a general way of thinking and to specific practices that emphasize using less of everything (time, money, materials, and so forth) to satisfy the customer by delivering the highest quality product at the lowest cost in the shortest time. Wh...

BACKGROUND Lean and Six Sigma are business management strategies commonly used in production industries to improve process efficiency and quality. During the past decade, these process improvement techniques increasingly have been applied outside the manufacturing sector, for example, in health care and in software development. This article concerns the potential use of Lean and Six Sigma in im...