Lean Deployment in Healthcare: a systematic literature review

The purpose of this paper is to provide further understanding of how Lean thinking has been implemented in healthcare and how it has dealt with likely problems occurred in this sector. To achieve these objectives a systematic review of lean publications was undertaken. An analytic framework, based on a literature review to understand Lean thinking deployment as an activity, generated two research questions about the Lean maturity level throughout the healthcare sector and the existence of any difference, during the implementation of this method, amongst the geographical areas.