Implementing Lean Methodologies in Healthcare Systems - A Case Study.

The Toyota Production System (TPS) is mainly based on industrial principles and uses to eliminate the wastes in a production system to increase the products' efficiency. Several lean tools and principles like Value Stream Map, which represents not only the flow between people, materials, and information but also value added and non value added steps. In this project, a team implemented lean principles to improve the sterilization department in hospital. The project was done in a step by step suggesting manner. Two Kaizen events were identified for which a pokayoke system was developed and some changes were made in the current working patterns. In one of the kaizen events, the cycle time of the process was reduced by implementing lean principles in the healthcare system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]