7.3 Operations decisions  (Page 3/5)

Quality improvement efforts require a great deal of analysis and teamwork, as well as a determined effort to make quality a top priority in the organization. Improving quality requires everyone to adopt a “continuous improvement” philosophy, where everyone approaches their work with the view that there are always opportunities to improve on the organization’s key performance measures. Continuous improvement efforts are complex, multidimensional, and require partnerships among workers, management, suppliers, and customers.

Scheduling decisions

Scheduling is an operations decision that strives to provide the right mix of labor and machines to produce goods and services at the right time to achieve both efficiency and customer service goals. For example, a hotel must anticipate the peaks and valleys in demand that may occur during a day, during the week, and at different times of the year. Labor (front desk clerks, room service personnel, housekeepers, bellhops, etc.) must be scheduled carefully to meet customer demand at any given time, without scheduling excess employees that would impose unnecessary costs on the hotel. In a hospital setting, scheduling surgeries is a very important activity. Surgeons, nurses, support staff, equipment, supplies, and operating rooms must be scheduled carefully so patient surgeries can be conducted effectively and efficiently. At colleges and universities, scheduling the right courses with the right number of classroom seats at the right times is critical to allowing students to graduate on time.

Process decisions

Managers must decide how to organize equipment and labor to achieve the competitive goals of the organization. There are two basic choices for organizing the workplace to produce goods and services: (1) intermittent processes, and (2) repetitive processes.

Intermittent processes organize labor and equipment into departments by similarity of function to serve a wide variety of production requirements. For example, a health care clinic must cater to the individual needs of every patient who enters the clinic for treatment. One patient may have a broken ankle, while another patient may be a pregnant woman who needs a prenatal care checkup. One patient may be a baby with a fever, while another patient may be getting a prescription medication refilled. The primary organizational goal for a health clinic is effectiveness in treating the individual needs of each patient, and an intermittent process is often the most suitable way to organize labor and equipment to provide customized treatment for each individual patient. X-ray equipment and technicians are organized into an “X-ray Department”. Other departments are created for pediatrics, lab, gynecology, pharmacy, physical therapy, and many more. Patients are routed only to the departments that are needed for their particular treatment requirements. This production process is called an “intermittent” process, because the activity of each department happens intermittently at irregular intervals, depending on the particular needs of different patients (customers) at different points in time.