Operation Management Technique

Operation Management Technique

Question 1:

1. What features can help an organization achieve a competitive advantage through operations?

Competitive advantage in the healthcare sector is of the great essence since it not only promotes business but also ensures quality care is achieved to save human life. In any health care organization, there are specific features which anchor the organization to the competitive healthcare market in terms of services offered (Heizer, 2016, pg. 124). The major targeted features are the external and internal environments of an organization which goes hand in hand with the cost and differentiation rationales. In the cost advantage, the organization must focus on producing the health care services at a cheaper cost compared to the key competitors in the market. In order to achieve this advantage, it is fundamental for the organization to consider features like the transportation model and its applications when it comes to distribution of services and obtaining goods. In the transportation problem, it important to consider the facility location and the aggregate planning for that particular good. It is a linear programming problem which aims at delivering the goods and services at the cheapest expected costs from the sources to the destinations in order to minimize the total transportation and distribution costs (Chen et al, 2011, pg.261). Using this table of the transportation problem, an equilibrium is established between the demand and supply in terms of the cheapest cost when the closed paths in the model produce the least cost for transportation. Another feature is the production of different products from those of the competitors. Here, an example of a healthcare facility must aim to have modern equipment aimed at offering different services. The differentiation will bring with it benefits to an organization as it tries to monopolize the market, it will also help the organization to hit the target market and hence acquiring the competitive advantage.

1. Give two examples, one for a local organization and the other one for international organization that produces a unique product and services. What are the products or services? In what sense are they unique? Explain.

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For the local organization, the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCHS) also known as the Saudi council is an independent government organization that regulates the health care-related practices and accreditation. It is a scientific body founded by the virtue of the Royal Decree (Heizer, 2016, pg. 124). It offers services which have helped to establish the modern state of the healthcare institutions. These institutions have attracted well-trained medical personnel who are accredited. The organization also ensures the Saudi physicians pursue medical training in a diversified medical facility. The SCHS is mandated to formulate the proper standards and criteria for the development of health professionals. Besides, the organization also aims at developing skills that enrich a medical professional acquire scientific literature and apply the skills in various fields. These are unique services owing to the fact that only this organization in the whole Saudi is mandated to perform the aforementioned services. The international; organization is the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that seeks to achieve a successful universal public health through its corporate services (Moghaddam et al, 2011, pg.105). The organization is also mandated to stimulate and promote biomedical and health services research, stimulate the establishment of the international standards for biological and pharmaceutical products as well as the diagnostic procedures. The services offered by the WHO are gain unique services considering it is the only organization that is funded by the UN to cater for health care services across the globe. It is a mandate well-articulated in the UN constitution and the uniqueness of these services allows the organization to access even the marginalized areas in Africa to deliver health care services.

• State two examples of cultural and ethical issues that face operations managers in a global environment.

Operations managers face many issues related to cultural and ethical standards in the global trade environment and businesses (Dantzig, 2016, pg.35). All these companies have operation managers who at times are distributed globally depending on the geographical location of these companies. In this regard, all these managers have to talk to different consumers from different countries hence they become vulnerable to cultural and ethical issues. The ethical issues include, offers of gifts from contractors. This is considered an ethical issue because tender awarding to any contractor by the manager should be purely based on merit. Otherwise, it is seen as corruption. The merit criteria is again exclusive of gifts since gifts are only meant to attract favor from the managers during the tendering process and hence compromise the procedure. Another ethical issue is the pressure to alter status reports to mask delays. This is more prominent during the auditing of the companies and it becomes an ethical issue since the resultant reports are never accurate and do not give a true reflection of the company (Chen et al, 2011, pg.261). The operation managers also depend on the report submissions from the various departments in the organization, and as a matter of fact, not all departments avail their reports on time as per the audit requirements. In order to uphold the company’s reputation, the operation managers are always subjected to pressure to alter the available information to suit the current audit requirements. It becomes an ethical issue because some managers are even tempted to revisits the previous years’ reports to cover the delays experienced so everything seem to be normalized.

Many managers face bribery as a cultural issue in their daily company operations. Bribery is against societal codes of conducts and for this reason, most governments set up anti-corruption agencies to tackle the menace. It compromises the integrity of the company in many dimensions from the employee integrity to the quality of products and services. Reports by the Saudi Arabian business anti-corruption portal indicates that the Saudi government selectively enforces the Combating Bribery Law and The Civil Service Law to criminalize various forms of corruption. Under this umbrella, most operation managers find an ambient environment to execute the orthodox bribery means of doing businesses (Dantzig, 2016, pg.35). Intellectual property rights is yet another cultural issue many operations managers face in a global environment. They include industrial property and copyrights. Under the industrial property, we have the patents for inventions, trademark and industrial designs. It is a cultural issue for a company to use a trademark belonging to another company. It is therefore the role of the operations manager to ensure a correct trademark is adhered to.

Question 2:

Write a two (2) to five (5) pages essay describing one of the Operations Management techniques you studied in class that is applied in the field in your work or in a similar environment. Please include descriptions and figures where appropriate and draw a conclusion on the effectiveness of the solution.

Operations management technique is a set of business administration practices which create the highest efficiency level within an organization (Chen et al, 2011, pg.260). The major goals of operations management is to converting materials and labor into goods and services with the aim of maximizing profits for any organization. There are various operations management techniques which play a pivotal role in profiting the respective organizations. They include quality management, design of goods and services, project management, forecasting and capacity planning. Various mathematical models are also integrated alongside these techniques to offer optima solutions which minimize the costs of productions. They include but not limited to transportation problems, linear programming models and the time series analysis (Dantzig, 2016, pg.35). The operations management technique here is the quality management as it applies to the dental department where I worked. Our dental clinic is only dedicated to dental excellence in the whole of Saudi Kingdom. The clinic establishes national dental standards and also offers premier dental care to the families (Vaidya, 2016, pg. 6). As a quality management technique, the clinic uses the latest technologies in orthodontic field for diagnosis, planning, and treatment to ensure the patients receive the best care possible. The services are wide ranged from the orthodontics, endodontics, periodontics, oral and maxillofacial surgery, pediatric dentistry, cosmetic dentistry, Prosthodontics and dental hygiene. As a tool of quality management, we applied wide varieties of statistical process control (SPC) with the aim of building the total quality management system that identifies and satisfies the customer needs. In the clinic, all the departments are structured in such a way that all our patients are well-directed to the relevant department of choice. The standard’s criteria are met when contacting our management team. The chief of the department is a qualified staff, licensed and registered with training, education and has vast experience in the practice of dentistry. The current eligible patient care needs in the clinic are estimated at 160,000 with the General dentistry services recording the highest number of patients per month in 2,523 patients. Table 1: Dental Services versus Monthly Number of Patients

In regard to the high number of dental patient influx as evident in table 1, the management team has contracted trained and qualified staff segmented as follows. The department has 39 dentists-clinicians, 18 Dental hygienists technicians. 27 Dental Laboratory Technicians, 19 Dental Instrument Recirculation Center Technicians, 83 Dental Assistants and 9 Dental Radiology Technicians) who are qualified, licensed by the Ministry of Health and registered with the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties

Figure 1: Organizational Chat

Quality care seeks to address the customers’ needs and hence meeting the patients’ expectations (Chen et al, 2011, pg.261). The staff at the clinic are included in quality improvement through various means in the organization. The dental services department is in charge of monitoring the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in all the fundamental sectors. These key areas include service income, safety, waiting time among other indicators. The annual Performance Evaluation Program (PEP) ensures all the clinical service groups perform a review of the clinical performance. The gathered reports inclusive of data collected are submitted to the JHAH QI office on a quarterly basis. From these results, the management is able to gauge the incidences of the expired dental materials and hence possible supply. The forecasting technique by end of December 2017 indicates a decrease in the expired dental materials to 0% in dental operations.

Using the same figures, there is an increase in compliance with the documentation of patient education in patient teaching record to 70% by end December 2017.

From the annual department plans, the business plan for the Dental Service Department is anchored on the following key pillars. Capital resources, Human resources, and financial resources. In the capital resources, the department will introduce the dental cone beam computed tomography and imaging software for the orthodontic radiographic tracing. Additionally, the department looks forward to implementing dental information technology systems as well as planning for new physical infrastructure. The human resources will be pegged on the training of the staff, increasing accountability, amending the hiring process and criteria to avoid ethical and cultural flaws, refining organization structure, optimizing patient flow and implementing staggered shifts. Al these are components of strategic management (Chen et al, 2011, pg.262). The financial business pans will continuously analyze the pricing position so as to remain relevant in the dental care, expand patient’s base and improve visibility into profit and loss.

A quality manager must ensure the staff in place is a staff which is well-oriented to assume virtually all the relevant duties in the organization even in the absentia of the operations manager (Vaidya, 2016, pg. 5). It is in this regard that the staff departmental orientation program is fundamental to achieving quality management. The Dental Services Department provides employees with a two-day orientation in order to facilitate work integration. The newly hired employees are assigned mentors who ensure the needs and the concerns of the new hire are protected. This form of management technique also targets to improve the employee relationships. The orientation program includes dental clinic orientation, general policies and procedure orientation, and the general understanding of the department programs. The programs in place for the dental department are centered on ethics and quality management where all the stakeholders’ wellbeing must put into consideration. The ethics in quality care are fundamental since any organization is only judged by the way they respond to problems. For any organization to carry out its business operations effectively, quality management has to be in place. With quality management, the quality staff is guaranteed and consequently, quality services (Vaidya, 2016, pg. 114). The quality management technique assists the organization in development bot the long and the short term goals within in the fiscal years. A well-developed fiscal plan is attributed to profitability since it will take into considerations all the components in the trend values and help in forecasting. Quality management technique, therefore, provides a solution for accurate plans in the organization.

Question 3:

Write a two (2) to three (3) pages essay on a real problem taken from your experience or seen in the real world in which you would like to see one of the Operation Management techniques you studied being applied to. Structure your answer in the following way:

1 – Describe the problem

The Oncology Institute at Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare (JHAH) in Saudi Arabia is well known for cancer treatment, they use local products in Saudi to combat the diocese to rescue the Saudi population (Chen et al, 2011, pg.266). It started operations in the 1990s as Saudi Aramco Medical Services Organization (SAMSO) and through the cancer care brands and physical expansion, it has transformed to JHAH. The facility uses a wider range of cancer treatment drugs like the Abemaciclib along radiology, chemotherapy, plastic surgery reconstruction and medical oncology. In this case, the Abemaciclib acts as a complementary drug to treatment of breast cancer and a combination of systems of medicines with the aim of treating cancer. During these years, the drug was being used in large cities only with countryside regions in Saudi becoming the marginalized areas as far as the distribution was concerned. Since the 1990s, the healthcare authorities have taken charge to develop more sophisticated cancer treatment methods as well as cancer care professionals (Moghaddam et al, 2011, pg.104). Today, Saudi Arabia is one of the most populated countries in the world with a population density of 15.02 square kilometers as at 2016 according to the World Bank collection indicators. Nevertheless, the supply of the Abemaciclib drugs to the cancer care hospitals has to be maintained in order to meet the overwhelming demands. The major problem here lies in the supply cost of the Abemaciclib drugs to the hospitals at the cheapest cost to minimize the production expenditures. Additionally, the quality of the Abemaciclib must also be managed by the producing companies to suit the market demands.

2 – Describe the solution you would like to see applied

In terms of the distribution at a cheaper cost, I would like to see the transportation problem applied. Considering the towns mostly affected in Saudi which are Riyadh, Al Kharj and Ar Rass, there is need to design a suitable transportation problem which will enable the supply of the Abemaciclib medicine to all the hospitals in these towns. Transportation problem as mentioned before is programmed mathematical problem which provides the best option for transporting a product. It involves the design of a special linear programming model called the transportation. It will form a network flow problem linking these towns. From the points of supply which are Buraydah, Mecca and Medina. Finding an initial solution and improving it to find improved solutions until an optimal solution is reached for the cost of transportation form these sources to the destinations (Moghaddam et al, 2011, pg.101). Setting up this problem involves location of the producers and the hospitals. Then the companies will estimate the monthly production capacity of each factory and the drugs needed at each hospital. The restriction regarding the hospital requirements and the production index must be adhered to fully. In order to keep track of the algorithms used in the computation. The transportation table is constructed such that the capacity output for the companies is equivalent to the hospital demands. Using the North-West corner rule, the initial and then the optimal feasible solution is arrived at using an iterative technique. In terms of the quality management, I would like to total quality management pedigree applied. The companies must do continuous assessment, benchmarking and employee empowerment as ingredients of producing high quality Abemaciclib medicine.

3 – Comment on the possible benefits of the solution

The transport problem rationale would ensure the Abemaciclib drug and their components are distributed in unison to the hospitals in the towns. As a collective entity, the use of the transportation problems has enabled Abemaciclib drugs to reach the hospitals at the cheapest cost which is considered feasible optimum solution. It minimizes the cost across the given networks passing through all the nodes (hospitals) once and closing the circuit before returning to the manufacturer. The transportation problem will also help in forecasting. Forecasting is the underlying basis for any business decision. It helps in production, invention, acquiring qualified personnel and facilities (Moghaddam et al, 2011, pg.99). All these are possible from the transportation costs saved via the specifications of the forecasting time horizons. It will, in the long run, influence the product lifecycle. The forecast will bring about time series analysis which involves the analysis of the trend, cyclical, seasonal and random components. The end result would be a prediction of the future prospects of the business at large. If the trend components are persistent or overall upward, the company and the overall management is assured as opposed to the downward pattern. The moving average method could also be used to forecast in cases where there is little or no trend and a smooth curve required (Vaidya, 2016, pg. 9). Quality management efforts would definitely win the customer’s tastes and preference. If the medicines are of high quality, most hospitals would place bids for supply form the manufacturers. This the aim of any franchised business operation.

References

Chen, C., Duan, S., Cai, T., Liu, B. and Hu, G., 2011. Smart energy management system for         optimal microgrid economic operation. IET renewable power generation, 5(3), pp.258-            267.

Dantzig, G., 2016. Linear programming and extensions. Princeton university press. Pp.35

Heizer, J., 2016. Operations Management, 11/e. Pearson Education India. Pp. 123-125

Moghaddam, A.A., Seifi, A., Niknam, T. and Pahlavani, M.R.A., 2011. Multi-objective operation             management of a renewable MG (micro-grid) with back-up micro-turbine/fuel cell/battery             hybrid power source. Energy, 36(11), pp.99-107.

Vaidya, O.S. and Kumar, S., 2016. Analytic hierarchy process: An overview of     applications. European Journal of operational research, 169(1), pp.1-29.