Leading Edge Group

IMPLEMENTING LEAN IN HEALTHCARE’S WAREHOUSE OPERATIONS – EVALUATION OF 5S’S BEST PRACTICE

Sanjith Venkateswaran, Isabelina Nahmens, and Laura Ikuma

Department of Construction Management and Industrial Engineering, Louisiana State University, 3128 Patrick F. Taylor, Baton Rouge, LA, USA,

Lean strategies in healthcare aims to improve patient throughput, reducing medication errors, redesigning work flow, improving patient safety, and reducing cycle time but studies to improve healthcare’s warehouse operation was not common. Managing medical supplies has always been a priority due to demand uncertainties and the risk of shortages which would greatly affect patient safety. This study showcases two  implementation approaches for 5S (Hybrid and traditional) conducted in three different hospitals’ central warehouses at Ochsner Health System. These warehouses store similar medical products with over 1000 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 5S’s to improve healthcare warehouse operations. Although, all 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 and 15.7% space saved. Lessons learned from this case study are discussed and used to propose guidelines to integrate inventory management techniques and 5S.