A lean approach to healthcare management using multi criteria decision making

Recent challenges induced by the global pandemic COVID-19 have highlighted the critical importance of coping with a sudden surge in demand for front line healthcare services. Motivated by the success of lean implementation in manufacturing systems, this study attempts to apply the lean principles in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inOpsearch Vol. 58; no. 3; pp. 610 - 635
Main Authors Bharsakade, Ramkrishna S., Acharya, Padmanava, Ganapathy, L., Tiwari, Manoj K.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New Delhi Springer India 2021
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Analytic hierarchy process
Application
Application Article
Business and Management
COVID-19
Decision analysis
Decision making
Health care
Health care delivery
Hospitals
Management
Mathematics
Multiple criterion
Operations research
Operations Research/Decision Theory
Strategic management
Wastes
Lean wastes
Healthcare
MCDM
Fuzzy AHP
Waste prioritization
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Summary:Recent challenges induced by the global pandemic COVID-19 have highlighted the critical importance of coping with a sudden surge in demand for front line healthcare services. Motivated by the success of lean implementation in manufacturing systems, this study attempts to apply the lean principles in healthcare delivery environments. The lean approach begins with the identification of seven types of wastes in any production or service system. This study attempts to identify and prioritize the present in hospitals. The study contributes to the existing body of knowledge in two ways. First, we identify the various sources contributing to the seven basic wastes in healthcare delivery. Second, we prioritize the seven types of wastes and the dimensions contributing to these wastes using a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). This paper used the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process approach, which is a well-accepted tool in MCDM. The study was conducted at select hospitals located in and around Pune city in India. We find that waiting, transportation, motion, and defects are dominant in adopting lean practices among the seven wastes. The findings of this study may guide hospital management in strategic planning in adopting a lean healthcare process. To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to extract, and prioritise lean wastes within the context of the healthcare sector.
ISSN:0030-3887
0975-0320
DOI:10.1007/s12597-020-00490-5