Abstract

Due to the worldwide epidemiological crisis, the biomedical engineering sector, as part of the Egyptian Public Health Administration, has become under intense pressure to play a vital role in delivering appropriate healthcare service in the country and improve its performance. Most medical equipment maintenance centers in the country have struggled to provide functional medical equipment in the public healthcare sector while keeping up with huge repair orders to meet the growing needs of medical devices to provide quality services at affordable cost. Hence, there is a great need to deploy continuous improvement and waste elimination methodologies such as lean six sigma (LSS) in the biomedical engineering sectors to enhance process capability to return repaired equipment back to the field in a timely manner. The purpose of this article is to present a case study on the application of lean six sigma methodology at a medical devices repair center in Egypt. A comprehensive analysis of the entire process has been carried out to reduce its lead time of the repair by improving the entire process. The results indicate that lean six sigma can be applied effectively to improve the availability of functional medical devices in public hospitals in Egypt.