Lean healthcare. An experience in Italy

In this paper we present the experience of a lean implementation in a Hospital. It all steamed out from a need to cut cost, and the focus on inventory reduction. The methodology adopted and the peculiarities of an implementation in a hospital are presented. A strong reduction in inventory has been achieved but, more important, broken processes which lead to excessive inventories have been identified so giving the possibility to remove the root causes and avoid having the problem again. Finally, one of the best results has been to make people in the hospital see differently about materials management activities: best and faster results, with less effort, are not achieved by batching (e.g. ordering 3 weeks consumption of a medicine needed) rather by standardizing activities and levelling orders and activities throughout the week (e.g. order every day all medicines consumed).