What is Lean? : -A case study of how Akademiska Hospital’s departments work with Lean

Abstract: The main purpose of this thesis is to examine how Lean is applied at the Akademiska hospital in Uppsala, Sweden. Lean is regarded as a solution for many issues connected to healthcare. We consider it interesting to examine to what extent Lean is applicable to healthcare in regard with that Lean is initially created for the production industry. We have conducted interviews with leaders and employees at the head division and at four different departments to see if there exists a difference in how they work Lean. From our study we can see that Lean is manifested differently at the departments based on which typology of technology they belong to and how the leaders communicate Lean to its employees. We hope that this study has clarified both difficulties and opportunities with implementing Lean at a hospital. Suggestions for further studies would be to examine what implications there could be with combining Lean with other management philosophies.