Successes in lean manufacture have led researchers and practitioners to consider extending ‘lean’ to different parts of the engineering enterprise, including product and process development (PPD). Lean product development (PD) has been understood to mean lean manufacture applied to PD, while the roots of lean PD – just like lean manufacture go back to Toyota. This paper presents the methodology...

The Japanese automotive industry is based around principles of “lean thinking”, and attaches great importance to reducing waste and focusing on those activities which add value for the customer. There has recently been interest in applying similar principles in service industry environments, including communications providers. This paper discusses the application of lean principles to BT, and d...

UNLABELLED Whether tracheal intubation is more difficult in obese patients is debatable. We compared the incidence of difficult tracheal intubation in obese and lean patients by using a recently validated objective scale, the intubation difficulty scale (IDS). We studied 134 lean (body mass index, <30 kg/m2) and 129 obese (body mass index, >or=35 kg/m2) consecutive patients. The IDS scores, cat...

PURPOSE Lean is a widely used quality improvement methodology initially developed and used in the automotive and manufacturing industries but recently expanded to the healthcare sector. This systematic literature review seeks to independently assess the effect of Lean or Lean interventions on worker and patient satisfaction, health and process outcomes, and financial costs. DATA SOURCES We co...

BACKGROUND Incidents and quality problems are a prime cause why health care leaders are calling to redesign health care delivery. One of the concepts used is lean thinking. Yet, lean often leads to resistance. Also, there is a lack of high quality evidence supporting lean premises. In this paper, we present an overview of lean thinking and its application to health care. DEVELOPMENT, THEORY A...

DESIGN In order to characterize whether different degrees of adipose tissue storage may be associated with markers of early atherosclerosis, we evaluated oxidant-antioxidant status and inflammatory markers and determined carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) in healthy constitutional lean and obese pre-pubertal children. METHODS Eighty healthy pre-pubertal lean and obese children were recruit...

were experiencing difficulty meeting OR turnover goals. Extended turnovers increased patient and physician wait times and disrupted flow in the OR suite. The team averaged 20 minutes to complete room turnovers, and in some observed cases, they required 25 minutes. Absent personnel, missing supplies , delayed delivery of the patient to the OR, and undefined responsibilities were just a few of th...