Making the value flow: application of value stream mapping in a Brazilian public healthcare organisation

During the last decade, there has been a demand for public services to enhance management practices and attain results comparable to those experienced in the private sector. The need for achieving higher quality standards in public services has highlighted the importance of exploring new management techniques to account for the obsolescence in those organisations' administrative models, with particular emphasis on healthcare services. This paper reports the application of one such new management technique, named value stream mapping (VSM), in the sterilised materials unit of a public healthcare organisation. In the case study presented here, we demonstrate the benefits of analysing healthcare processes using VSM; most notably reduction of wastes, inventory levels, and production lead times. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, it adds to the existing body of knowledge on lean management by examining the validity of applying lean principles and practices in contexts other than manufacturing. Second, it provides a detailed description of VSM applied in a hospital sterilisation unit; even though lean healthcare applications have been increasingly reported in the literature, to the best of our knowledge this is the first study to address the use of VSM in such context.