Benefits of a hospital two-bin kanban system

Download
Author
Olson, Andrew S.
Date
2014-09Advisor
Dimitrov, Nedialko
Silvestrini, Rachel
Second Reader
Dixon, Michael
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Managing the distribution of medical supplies to clinical units within a hospital is a key component of a hospital’s administrative costs. In an attempt to control costs, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC) installed a two-bin kanban system across multiple departments. In this thesis, we analyze the effectiveness of the kanban system from two viewpoints: organizational benefits—defined as the process of organizing the supply-chain into the two-bin kanban system—and inventory benefit—defined as the effects of staging the resupply in a two-bin fashion. We analyze two years of data, across twelve departments, comprising almost 375,000 items ordered. The results show significant organizational benefits to the hospital overall, and a steady-state in inventory costs. The data did not show consistent results across individual departments, with departments experiencing increases, decreases, and steady-states for both benefits. Additionally, we note that there is further room for WRNMMC to exploit the kanban system's ability to optimize inventory sizes via the two-bin kanban process.
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.Collections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Two-Bin Kanban: Ordering Impact at Navy Medical Center San Diego
Carter, Audrey (Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2016-06-01); NPS-LM-16-146One of the most important aspects of hospital administration is the medical consumable inventory process. The Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) hopes to improve the medical inventory process across the Navy ... -
Two-bin Kanban: ordering impact at Navy Medical Center San Diego
Carter, Audrey J. (Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School, 2016-06);One of the most important aspects of hospital administration is the medical consumable inventory process. The Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) hopes to improve the medical inventory process across the Navy ... -
Agile-Lean Software Engineering (ALSE) Evaluating Kanban in Systems Engineering
Turner, Richard; Madachy, Ray; Lane, Jo Ann; Ingold, Dan; Levine, Laurence (2013-03-06); SERC-2013-TR-022-2This research project evaluates the use of on-demand (pull or kanban) scheduling approaches in systems engineering (SE). Such approaches have been seen to be valuable in software system development. In particular, the ...