Implementing Lean in Healthcare Warehouse Operations-Evaluation of 5S Best Practice

• Main Author: Venkateswaran, Sanjith
• Other Authors: Nahmens, Isabelina
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: LSU 2011
• Subjects: Construction Management and Industrial Engineering
• Online Access: http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-06082011-094408/

Lean strategies in healthcare aim at improving patient throughput, reducing medication errors, redesigning work flow, improving patient safety, and reducing cycle time. Documented studies to improve healthcares warehouse operation are not common in the literature. Managing types of medical supplies has always been a priority due to demand uncertainties and the risk of shortages that would profoundly affect patient safety. This study showcases two implementation approaches for the Lean tool 5S (Hybrid and Traditional) conducted in three different hospitals central warehouses at Ochsner Health System. These warehouses store similar medical products with over 1000 types of supplies (e.g. syringes, gloves, primary IV) that supply different departments within hospitals and clinics. The participating warehouses faced similar problems due to over/under stocked inventories, space constraints, and poor layouts. The objective of this study was to compare the impact of implementing a Hybrid 5S (integrated with inventory management techniques and process improvement tools) along with two Traditional 5Ss to improve healthcare warehouse operations. Although the two approaches improved the baseline warehouse process, the warehouse that used the Hybrid 5S showed the greatest improvement with an increase of 59.5% in inventory turnover, 15.7% space saved, and least number of non-conformities in the 5S audit tool.