preliminary framework for lean supply chain integration assessment index in the healthcare sector

Healthcare providers face the formidable challenge of providing high-quality treatment without passing the costs on to their patients. rising hospital inventory costs in recent years have highlighted the critical importance of developing a more efficient healthcare supply chain management (scm) system. despite the importance and the potential of lean supply chain applications in the healthcare sector, extensive development is necessary for the successful adaptation of lean integration across the supply chain network. there have been very few comprehensive frameworks of all the critical success factors (csf) that enable lean-supply chain integration (lsci) for healthcare. only a few studies provided an index for lean-related activities in the healthcare context. the objective of this paper is to propose a obtain the critical success factors in lean-supply chain integration for healthcare and develop an lsci assessment index to measure. the paper used a systematic literature review of recent studies on critical success factors of lean supply chain in healthcare. the results of the review enabled the development of the proposed lsci assessment index based on the identified csf of supply chain and lean implementation in the healthcare context. the index is divided into categorical factors related to organization, supply, patients, technology, and lean implementation. the expert validation process involved feedback from 20 academics and experts with expertise in lean supply chain management and healthcare operations, ensuring the questionnaire's comprehensiveness and relevance. the pilot reliability study with experts assessed the questionnaire's reliability using cronbach's alpha, demonstrating acceptable consistency for the research variables.