Identifiering och minimering av slöserier på en liten tandläkarklinik

Sammanfattning: This case study focuses its purpose on the use of Lean tools for identification and minimization of waste on small dental clinics. During the projects course we will examine how Lean tools can be used to identify different types of waste dynamics. Then which wastes that are identified and how these can be minimized. To answer these issues, we have studied a small dental clinic in Uppsala, Sweden that has yet to implement any type of Lean philosophy nor tools. What we discovered in the collected empirical data was that many types of wastes occur in between different working activities of the patient treatment process. To identify and help understand how to minimize these wastes we contacted a dental clinic that had already implemented the Lean philosophy. We discovered that the Lean tools 5S, Kaizen, visual management and value stream mapping would fit in and had their own specific area of use in the project. This was done to more precisely be able to answer the project purpose. In conclusion the Lean tools were very effective in identifying waste dynamics in the working space of a small dental clinic. Many of the wastes that affected the time to treat a patient were not previously noticed by the staff. The suggestions on how to minimize the wastes were used but not measured to its fullest extent. Instead, it shows how a small dental business can choose to implement the philosophy and tools if needed.