Profile Information

Profile

Lawrence D. Fredendall is currently conducting research that is concerned with the implementation of lean operations and quality management in both health-services and manufacturing. One book, which was published by The St. Lucie Press/APICS Series, is titled Basics of Supply Chain Management. He has recently co-authored two books lean operations -- "An Introduction to Lean Work Design (Part 1): Fundamentals of Lean Operations" and "An Introduction to Lean Work Design (Part 2): Standard Practices and Tools of Lean." He has published research articles in Decision Sciences, Journal of Operations Management, European Journal of Operational Research and Production and Operations Management. He is currently engaged in research to improve patient flow a hospital's perioperative services unit funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). He is also engaged in a research project to design the operating suite of the future that is funded by AHRQ. He is also an active member of the Clemson University School of Health Research (CUSHR).

Research Interests

• My research seeks to deepen our theoretical understanding of business processes in order to provide a basis for understanding the implementation and value of lean operations in manufacturing and services. The majority of my research has examined the design of the multiple processes that exist in any business and how this design affects business performance.
• Lean Operations & Teams and Empowerment
• The importance of involving the entire workforce in the firm's efforts to become lean is well recognized. Multiple studies have documented the importance of developing practices that involve shop floor teams in improvement efforts. My research has investigated what practices firms take to empower their work force to make improvements and how this empowerment affects firm performance (see Fredendall et al., 2000).
• My research contributions is organized into 4 research streams whose relationship to lean operations is discussed below. While the research focus of each stream is different, each research stream contributes to our understanding of how lean combines sets of capabilities.
• Lean Operations and Quality Management: Quality management is necessary but not sufficient to achieve lean operations. Quality management involves both the application of tools to solve problems and more importantly it requires developing business systems that support quality efforts and ensure that continuous improvement.
• Lean Operations & Capacity and Scheduling: The importance of controlling the flow of work has long been recognized and has been an ongoing research question that is intertwined with the firm's capacity decisions.
• Lean Operations & Teams and Empowerment: The importance of involving the entire workforce in the firm's efforts to become lean is well recognized. My research has investigated what practices firms take to empower their work force to make improvements and how this empowerment affects firm performance (see Fredendall et al., 2000)
• Lean Operations & Maintenance Management: The importance of machine uptime has long been recognized as a determinant of performance.

Research Publications

• Research Publications in 2020
• Costa, Luana Bonome Message, Moacir Godinho Filho, Lawrence D. Fredendall, Gilberto Miller Devos Ganga. The effect of Lean Six Sigma practices on food industry performance: Implications of the Sector’s experience and typical characteristics. Food Control, 112, 2020 107110, pp. 1-15.doi.or/10.1016/j.foodcont.020.107110
• Alfred M., Catchpole K., Huffer, E., Fredendall, L., Taaffe, K. Work systems analysis of sterile processing: assembly. BMJ Qual Saf 2020;0:1-12. Doi:10.1136bmjqs-2019-010740
• Damali, Uzay,Lawrence D. Fredendall, Janis L. Miller, Customer Training and Education in Service Design: An Organizational Information Processing View. Accepted at Decision Sciences Journal, 12/16/2020
• Land, M.J., Thurer, M., Stevenson, M., Fredendall, L.D., Scholten, K. Inventory Diagnosis for Flow Improvement – A Design Science Approach. Accepted at Journal of Operations Management, 12/03/2020
• Taaffe, Kevin, Lawrence Fredendall, Robert Allen, Marisa Shehan, Mary Grace Stachnik, Taliyah Smith. Simulating the effects of operating room staff movement and door opening policies on microbial load, Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, ICHE, Accepted 12/1/20

Links

• Editorial: Delivering effective healthcare at lower cost: Introduction to the special issue. Editors: Lawrence D Fredendall and Jeffrey S. Smith