Performance Evaluation of Lean-Green Healthcare Manufacturing Plants: A Fuzzy TOPSIS Approach

In the recent past, the whole world has been affected by the pandemic, COVID-19. Under the conditions of the pandemic, the healthcare industry came to the fore. The focus has become primarily to understand how to enhance the healthcare sector in order to ensure that it provides for a better system for the patients. There are many facets under the umbrella of the healthcare sector. The healthcare sector can also be taken analogous to the supply chain of any firm wherein broadly it starts from the supply side and ends up providing to the end customers. The supplier provides raw materials for manufacturing, the manufacturers in this sector produce medical equipment and other medicines. Further, the finished products are distributed by various channels to the end-users which are the patients in this case. In this research, the aim is to focus on the manufacturing of medical equipment and the evaluation of the manufacturing plants. Keeping all other factors constant, the evaluation is carried out on the lean-green strategy utilized of the manufacturing plants. The case of a healthcare manufacturing firm is considered, which has multiple plants. The evaluation of the plants is carried out based on the performance and based on the implementation of lean-green strategies. There are many conflicting factors that help in the implementation of the lean-green strategy. To evaluate which of the plants of the firm has been able to implement the lean-green strategy in manufacturing of medical equipment, the fuzzy-technique for order preference with similarity to ideal solution (F-TOPSIS) is utilized. F-TOPSIS is a multi-criteria decision-making tool that helps in the evaluation of the plants by considering the conflicting criteria for evaluation. A case of a small-scale medical equipment manufacturing firm is considered.