Lean has its roots in Manufacturing, in particular the car industry, having been developed from the Toyota Production System (Ohno, [13] 1998). Over the years it has been adopted by many private manufacturing and service organisations. It could be argued that in these organisations in order to delivery products, services and, ‘value’ through a focus on profit there is a clear understanding of organisational processes, customer
requirements, demand and variation and, strategy.Thus, may be when introducing management practices such as Lean, which has a focus on value, process and
flow, the conditions of readiness already exist so there is a good ‘fit’ (Slack and Lewis, [14] 2007) which may allow a greater possibility of sustainability. However,
within research work carried out in public services it has become apparent that these underlying conditions of readiness are not always understood or present (Radnor et al, [15] 2006, Radnor and Bucci, [4] 2007). So, how important are these conditions of readiness in Health Care and, what relationship do they have to sustainability?