Publication year: 2011
Source: Social Science & Medicine, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 2 March 2011
Zoe J, Radnor , Matthias, Holweg , Justin, Waring
In an effort to improve operational efficiency, healthcare services around the world have adopted process improvement methodologies from the manufacturing sector, such as Lean Production. In this paper we report on four multi-level case studies of the implementation of Lean in the English NHS. Our results show that this generally involves the application of specific Lean ‘tools’, such as ‘kaizen blitz’ and ‘rapid improvement events’, which tend to produce small-scale and localised productivity gains. Although this suggests that Lean might not currently deliver the efficiency improvements desired in policy, the evolution of Lean in the manufacturing sector also reveals this…