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This study aims to investigate the mediating role of lean management on the relationship between workforce management and value-added time in private hospitals. This study also investigates the direct influences of workforce management and lean management on the value-added time of the hospitals.

This study applied a quantitative approach to obtain data from the private hospitals’ staff in Peninsular Malaysia. A self-administered survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 287 hospital staff using a stratified random sampling method. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach was used to determine the internal consistency, reliability, validity of the constructs. The PLS-SEM method was also used to test the hypothesised research model via SmartPLS 3.3.4 version.

The findings of the study indicate that lean management has a direct and significant effect on the value-added time of private hospitals. The findings also revealed that lean management significantly mediates the relationship between workforce management and value-added time in private hospitals. The analysis of the results indicates that both workforce and lean management have a significant impact on the value-added time of the hospitals.

This study provides empirical contributions to enhance the quality of workforce management, lean management and value-added time. The findings of this study provide valuable insights into how effectively managing the workforce and providing guidelines to augment the lean management practices can ensure value-added time in Malaysian hospitals and the overall health-care industry. The lean management framework provides useful insights for the policymakers to understand the significance of workforce management, lean management on ensuring value-added time through reducing waiting times, unnecessary delays, generating a higher degree of patient safety, satisfaction and loyalty.

The research findings provide some essential indications for the health-care service providers to understand how the lean management approach can be implemented to enhance value-added time and how lean management can play a mediating role in creating a link between workforce management and value-added time in hospitals. This study also contributes to the theoretical and practical perspectives. The present study contributes to a better understanding of workforce management and lean management in health-care sectors from theoretical and practical perspectives.

Developed economies with high-cost environments face industrial transitions from scale-based manufacturing (MAN) to knowledge, technology and intangible asset-based sectors. The purpose of this paper is to examine the changes in employment and value-adding profiles of transitioning industry sectors in Australia and discuss the implications for policy that influences the intellectual capital (IC) profile of industrial sectors in transition.

The approach borrowed concepts from the firm-level strategic management literature and applied them to a macro level of industry analysis. In this paper the authors examine the transitions in the Australian economy which, due to a rising cost base, is experiencing a decline in its value chain-oriented MAN sector. The authors contrast four industry sectors with the MAN sector and examine the different value creation models.

The findings clearly show how the contribution to employment and value added (termed Economic Value Contribution ) of the different sectors vary. The authors extend these findings to a discussion on policy and the dimensions of IC that may have a role to play in facilitating transitions within an economy. The main conclusion is that a more rapid transition and higher value may be created if innovation and entrepreneurship are facilitated by targeted policies in transitioning sector.

This work is based on a single country analysis of selected industry sectors. Further work needs to be done across many more countries to contrast the findings across nations/regions that differ in industrial complexity and to refine the analytical framework to improve construct validity and increase analytical power.

This work has implications for policy-makers facing the challenges of a transitioning economy, whether national or regional. Governments that are hands-on with respect to interventions to salvage and/or extend the life of sectors are at risk of missing opportunities to build the capacities and capabilities of emerging sectors while those governments that are hands-off, deferring to market mechanisms, risk transitions that are too little and/or too late to maintain a national or regional competitiveness.

To the authors knowledge, this is the first attempt to integrate the specific firm-level strategic management perspectives, used in this paper, with the macro-policy level to examine industry sectors with the twin metrics of economic productivity and employment in transitioning economies.

The calculation of quotations has been proven to be an extremely challenging matter in customized manufacturing requirements. There are significant wastages, which are attributed to activities related to the quotation preparation process (QPP) and their influence on an offer of delivery time to a customer. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to develop a tailor-made value stream mapping (VSM) approach, combined with a set of performance indicators for QPP performance measurement and management, to decrease the lead time of QPP.

Current and future state value stream maps have been developed to measure the performance of QPP. To minimize the weaknesses of the cycle efficiency indicator, additional indicators, assessing improvements to value- and non-value-added activities, external interested parties’ influence on lead time, etc., have been developed for QPP performance management. To illustrate the usefulness of the proposed indicators, a case study has been performed.

Only when all appropriate indicators are calculated than we have the whole overview of the current and future state in a QPP.

The proposed indicators were used only in one case study. If they are used in different case studies from different companies and operating in different industries, it will be possible to discover whether the presented indicators are enough to fully understand the analyzed process.

The proposed methodology is ready to be used in industry practice.

The presented VSM methodology, combined with a set of performance indicators for QPP, provides the originality of the work.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process optimization of a precast concrete component production line by using value stream mapping.

This paper is an empirical focused on of lean production theory and value stream mapping. The data in the case study were collected in real time on-site for each process during the production process of a prefabricated exterior wall.

The results of the current value stream map indicate that the main problems of the current production process are related to equipment, technology and organization. The equipment problems include simple demolding and cleaning tools and the lack of professional transfer channels. The technology problems include the lack of a marking mechanism and pipeline exit mechanism. There is a lack of standard operating procedures and incomplete process convergence. A comparison and analysis of the current value stream and the future value flow indicate that optimizations of the process flow, the production line layout, and the standard operating procedures have shortened the delivery cycle, reduced the number of workers, improved the operator’s operating level and balanced the production line.

The results of this study provide practitioners with a clear understanding of the optimization of the precast concrete component production and represent a method and basis for the process optimization of a factory production line; the approach is suitable for process optimization in other areas.

This research represents an innovative application of lean production theory and value stream mapping in a complex production line of precast concrete components and thereby fills the gap between the theory and practice of the optimization of a precast concrete component production line.

Retailing is the marketing institution with which consumers have the most immediate and frequent contact. As such, consumers should be concerned with how the behaviour and performance of retailers will impact on them. While the consumer may not be explicitly aware of it, the rate of return (RoR) on capital invested in retailing has both instantaneous and temporal impacts on consumer well‐being. When the RoR is high, relative to the cost of capital, retail prices are probably higher than they need be. However, this high RoR may persuade other investors (i.e. potential retailers) to enter the market, thereby eventually lowering prices and increasing product availability.

Problem solving and continuous process improvement are key elements to achieve business excellence. Many problem solving and process improvement methodologies have been proposed and adopted by organisations, with DMAIC being the most widely used. The purpose of this paper is to present an empirical application of a modified version of DMAIC which enabled a world-class organisation to achieve an optimum reduction in the lead time of its aerospace engine assembly process.

The paper reviews the most commonly used problem solving and process improvement methodologies and specifically, DMAIC, its variations and limitations. Based on this, it presents define, measure, analyse, improve, review, control (DMAIRC). Finally, DMAIRC is empirically applied through a case study, in a world-class manufacturing organisation.

The results obtained from the case study indicate that DMAIRC is an effective alternative to achieve the maximum improvement potential of a process. In particular, DMAIRC helped the organisation studied to achieve a 30 percent reduction in the lead time of its engine assembly process.

The novel problem solving and process improvement methodology presented in this paper can be used by organisations to undertake a more effective improvement project by assuring that the maximum potential of their improvement initiatives and processes is achieved.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a business model to generate quantitative evidence of the benefits of implementing radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, limiting the scope to outpatient surgical processes in hospitals.

The study primarily uses the define‐measure‐analyze‐improve‐control (DMAIC) approach, and draws on various analytical tools such as work flow diagrams, value stream mapping, and discrete event simulation to examine the effect of implementing RFID technology on improving effectiveness (quality and timeliness) and efficiency (cost reduction) of outpatient surgical processes.

The analysis showed significant estimated annual cost and time savings in carrying out patients' surgical procedures with RFID technology implementation for the outpatient surgery processes in a hospital. This is largely due to the elimination of both non‐value added activities of locating supplies and equipment and also the elimination of the “return” loop created by preventable post operative infections. Several poka‐yokes developed using RFID technology were identified to eliminate those two issues.

Several poka‐yokes developed using RFID technology were identified for improving the safety of the patient and cost effectiveness of the operation to ensure the success of the outpatient surgical process.

Many stakeholders in the hospital environment will be impacted including patients, physicians, nurses, technicians, administrators and other hospital personnel. Different levels of training of hospital personnel will be required, based on the degree of interaction with the RFID system. Computations of costs and savings will help decision makers understand the benefits and implications of the technology in the hospital environment.

Accident emergency hospital (AEH) services require cohesive, collective, uninterrupted streamlined medical diagnostic and satisfactory patient care. Medical service efficiency in AEHs is difficult to quantify due to the clinical complexity involved in treatment involving various units, patient conditions, changes in contemporary medical practices and technological developments. This paper aims to show how to measure efficiency by eliminating waste in AEH system, identify service failure points, identify benchmark medical services, identify patient throughput time and measure treatment time when AEH services are nonstandard. The applications shown in this paper are distinct in particular; we the authors use nontraditional and systems engineering approach to collect data as the traditional data collection is difficult in real-time AEHs.

The authors show in this study how to measure overall patient treatment time from admission to discharge. Project evaluation and review technique (PERT) captures the inconsistencies involved in measuring treatment time, including measures of variability. The irregular treatment time and complexity involved in the emergency health-care services are usual. The research methodology illustrates how the time function map and service blueprint can improve value-added time in AEHs and benchmark services between similar AEHs.

The inconsistency in treatment time between AEH in public and private hospital is found to be in ratio of 1:20. The private hospital suggests variety of treatments and long stays for recovery. The PERT computations show that the average time a patient remains in a government AEH is about 10 days. The standard deviation of the AEH treatment time is about 0.043 per cent of the expected patient care time. The inconsistency is not significant as compared to the expected value. In 89.64 per cent of the cases, a patient may be discharged in less than 10 days’ time. The patient on average is discharged in 13 days in a private hospital.

The patient treatment time of an AEH is evaluated with PERT project management approach to account for inconsistencies in treatment time. This research makes new contributions in benchmarking AEH throughput time, identify medical service failure points with service blueprint, measure the efficiency with time function map and collect patient data with nontraditional methods. The inherent inconsistencies in a clinical process are identified by PERT analysis with the variance as a characteristic of the treatment time. Improvement of variability implies cost reduction in AEH system.

This paper discusses the meaning and measurement of negative value added both in real and money terms. Examples as to how it might occur are provided and methods of dealing with inconsistencies which arise because of it, will be outlined.

The Six Sigma and Lean Production methodologies suggest that creating value for customers is the objective of a production process or an organisation. In the production context, “added value” dominates the discussion about the creation of value to customers. However, “added value” is often only defined conceptually or discussed at a strategic level, and the link between added value and customer value has not yet been well conceptualised. Therefore, the purpose of the paper is to develop a methodology to measure added value in order to complement the existing performance measures in Six Sigma and Lean Production by conceptualising the link between customer value and added value. The conceptual link “confirms” that quality, time, and costs are the elements of added value, which are transformed into a metric to express customer value. The implementation of the metric recommends the adoption of Lean (Six) Sigma and Lean Accounting (Activity Based Costing), which thus implies that “leanness” is an important “feature” of added value.