Lean Thinking and Six Sigma

Lean manufacturing is the production of goods using less of everything than in mass production: less human effort, less manufacturing space, less investment tools and less engineering time to develop a new product. A company becomes lean by continuously increasing its capacity to produce high-quality goods while simultaneously decreasing

“As global healthcare expenditure soars, and as systems are increasingly required to deliver better care to more people using less resource, the challenge to explore the promises of lean thinking is compelling” (Young and McClean, 2009 p.309). In the UK the government has set deadlines for Accident and Emergency (A&E) patients to be dealt with (Boseley, 2015). The hospitals are facing challenges for this deadline. In this context the implementation of lean can enable hospitals improve their efficiencies whiles at the same time reducing cost. This dissertation looks into the opportunities and challenges of implementing lean within the healthcare sector.

Production practices have had an important role in satisfying the dynamic market. Many approaches have being developed in order to respond effectively to specific business requirements. In fact, some areas of management have focused its study on the overseeing, designing, and controlling the process of production in an effort to find the best methodology that ensures the business success and performance. However, complexities arise in this field because many variables such as costs, inventory, scheduling, suppliers, etc have to be considered in any business. Lean approach and the traditional approach are two points of view that aim to address this complexities, and those will be examined in this essay.

“Lean is a systematic approach to identifying and eliminating waste (non-value-added activities) through continuous improvement by flowing the **product at the pull of the customer in pursuit of perfection.” Lockwood [24].

Lean maximizes throughout by reducing waste. It started out in manufacturing and production, and later branched out to be adopted in other areas. It is increasingly being deployed in startups, and in strategy analysis.

Value creation is creating value for the customer. Being able to solve or meet the customer requirements. Value is created whenever an action is taken for which the benefit exceeds the cost.

With the lean thinking process comes new ideas, systems and equipment that have been realistically applied to enhance the flow process. Methods used to deal with organization, standardization, exclusion of non-value added steps and overall visual control.

?As global healthcare expenditure soars, and as systems are increasingly required to deliver better care to more people using less resource, the challenge to explore the promises of lean thinking is compelling? (Young and McClean, 2009 p309). In the UK the government has set deadlines for Accident and Emergency (A&E) patients to be dealt with (Boseley, 2015). The hospitals are facing challenges for this deadline. In this context the implementation of lean can enable hospitals improve their efficiencies whiles at the same time reducing cost. This dissertation looks into the opportunities and challenges of implementing lean within the healthcare sector.

Lean Transformation and Six Sigma are process improvement strategies that can make any industry more efficient and cost effective. Implementing Lean processes and Six Sigma in managed healthcare can greatly improve the quality of healthcare, it can lower costs, and improve patient care. Lean Transformations in healthcare have also been able to greatly improve errors, improved patient outcomes, raise staff morale, and save millions of dollars in costs without affecting staffing (Taninecz, 2014).

Lean manufacturing is the production of goods using less of everything than in mass production: less human effort, less manufacturing space, less investment tools and less engineering time to develop a new product. A company becomes lean by continuously increasing its capacity to produce high-quality goods while

Having in mind what Lean is not, and acknowledging that Lean is about eliminating waste and constant improvement, there are few core principles of the

Besides that, lean management is one of the quality management approach. Lean management is an approach that supports continuous improvement, eliminate unnecessary process to improve efficiency and quality (Allen and Wigglesworth, 2009). Lean management originates at Toyota by Taiichi Ohno. Womak and Jones describe the 5 steps in applying lean management. First, define goals that align with customers needs and wants. Second, identify every steps in the process and eliminate unnecessary steps and steps that do not create value for customers. Third, connect the steps that create value. Fourth, encourage employee involvement and participation. Fifth, constantly improve to

The application and implementation of lean principles or thinking is a process that requires commitment from every stakeholder in the organization. This process entails commitment to the organization's workers and to the system itself in order to make changes towards improvement. Generally, the implementation of lean thinking is geared towards continuous improvement through the elimination of waste. However, lean management or implementation of the principles sometimes incorporate mistakes that are made by leaders in the execution process. This is mainly because lean leadership appears to be simple though its complex because of the costs associated with it. The mistakes usually occur because of intrinsic complexities of exploring deeply into organizational philosophies, business strategy, psychology, and macroeconomics.

Lean is defines the manufacturing philosophy that reduces the time between the shipping and customer demand, which based on the systematic method by eliminating waste, that means giving the customer what they want when they want it, and don 't waste whatever. Rahmana, Sharif and Esa (2013) suggested lean production is mentioned to improve the company 's performance from the philosophy in reducing waste in order. That means, lean system destination is the decrease cost by removing the non-value activities, which they are applying a category of tools and techniques for checking and eliminating defective in the production process. In the Evenort Company should emulate the five overriding principles of lean thinking in terms of implementing lean that there is guarantee the company has been driving correctly in the lean manufacturing (Cardiff 2015) as can show in table 1.

Lean is a process where creating more value to customers by minimizing wastage, time with less resources. Lean organization understand the customer value and try to increase proceed which adding more value to the business. In order to accomplish the lean thinking