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1. Introduction
Lean supply chain management (LSCM) in healthcare is in an early phase of development; therefore, a lack of academic research in the field has been recognized (Olsson and Aronsson, 2015). In recent years, improving the healthcare sector’s supply chain management (SCM) system has become remarkably important, due in part to the fact that healthcare inventory costs are continuously increasing. Thus, delivering quality of service without passing on the cost burden to the patients is a critical issue for healthcare organizations. Current evidence shows how amelioration of the supply chain system in healthcare is essential. For instance, statistical data from 2011 suggests that healthcare costs exceeded 17 per cent of the US GDP (Porter and Kaplan, 2011). The National Health Expenditure Data Highlights (US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services annual report) also show that healthcare costs increased to 17.9 per cent of the US GDP in 2016 and are expected to rise to 19.7 per cent by 2026 (Cuckler et al., 2018). Accordingly, minimizing inventory cost, reducing waste, maximizing supply chain interaction, and creating value in SCM in healthcare are fundamental for reducing healthcare costs in general (Nollet and Beaulieu, 2003). Furthermore, hospitals suffer from long wait times caused by an imbalance between supply and the number of patients in the system (Setijono et al., 2010; Khurma et al., 2008). Parnaby and Towill (2008) also express that it will be beneficial to observe the healthcare delivery system from a supply chain perspective because the balance between patient needs and supply (doctors, nurses, staff members, medications, and medical devices) reduces non-added-value activities in hospitals.
Recent studies revealed that healthcare organizations must view SCM as an opportunity to improve their system’s flow by eliminating non-added-value parameters. Correspondingly, lean thinking is widely known as a powerful method for removing such non-added-value elements from a system. Therefore, adapting lean concepts within supply chain – LSCM – seems to be able to improve the abovementioned healthcare issues. LSCM is a relatively new stream of research, which can be applied to healthcare (Jasti and Kodali, 2015). The general goal of applying LSCM to healthcare is, as mentioned above, removing the waste derived from non-added-value activities including waiting, overproduction, motion, transportation, excessive processing, inventory, and underutilization of...