A framework for health care planning and control

Rising expenditures spur health care organizations to organize their processes more efficiently and effectively. Unfortunately, health care planning and control lags far behind manufacturing planning and control. Successful manufacturing planning and control concepts can not be directly copied, because of the unique nature of health care delivery. We analyze existing planning and control concepts or frameworks for health care operations management, and find that they do not properly address various important planning and control problems. We conclude that they only focus on hospitals, and are too narrow, focusing on a single managerial area, such as resource capacity planning, or ignoring hierarchical levels. We propose a modern framework for health care planning and control. Our framework integrates all managerial areas involved in health care delivery operations and all hierarchical levels of control, to ensure completeness and coherence of responsibilities for every managerial area. The framework can be used to structure the various planning and control functions, and their interaction. It is applicable broadly, to an individual department, an entire health care organization, and to a complete supply chain of cure and care providers. The framework can be used to identify and position various types of managerial problems, to demarcate the scope of organization interventions, and to facilitate a dialogue between clinical staff and managers. We illustrate the application of the framework with examples

Investigation of strategic capacity issues in the aerospace sector

The business environment is changing fast and radically. Traditional capacity planning has limitations in today’s dynamic environments, particularly from a strategic perspective in the aerospace sector. This document sets out to identify the unique characteristics of the aerospace industry and compare the traditional views of capacity planning and modern concepts in SCP relevant to the sector. Key findings are summarised from an analysis of the literature on strategic capacity planning. The importance of considering demand uncertainty, technology uncertainty and supply uncertainty is highlighted. Two case studies in the aero- engine sector are presented. A collaborative virtual organisation requires Strategic Capacity Planning (SCP) that focuses not only on economies of scale but also on coordination, flexibility and responsiveness. An integrated framework for addressing SCP in the aerospace industry is presented

Титульні сторінки

In an effort to combat the complexity and uncertainty that comes with megainfrastructure development, planners often seek to simplify the process and scope of their projects, making plans that consist of rigid sequential steps. The question is how this approach influences planners’ responsiveness to uncertainty and complexity in megaproject decision making and planning. To answer this question I introduce two concepts: adaptive capacity and strategic capacity. I develop these concepts and apply them to three large infrastructure projects in the Netherlands in order to analyze the potential of these projects to deal with change and inertia. In this paper I first look at the concepts individually and then link them together. This shows that, to be successful, planning needs to navigate a project through uncertainty and complexity and that it is important that these concepts are taken into consideration

Water Resources Engineering 2: Water Resource Systems - George Mason University

To introduce concepts, applications, and tools of systems analysis for water resources planning, management, and design. To apply these principles to problems including river basin planning, real-time hydrosystem operations, water quality management, capacity expansion, urban drainage network design, and sanitary sewer design. Course taught at George Mason University

Airport capacity dynamics: A ‘proof of concept’ approach

The continuing growth in aviation has meant that the 35 largest airports in Europe reached saturation in 2005. The consequences have been increasing air traffic congestion, delays and associated costs. There is therefore a clear need to create more capacity. However, airports in particular and the air transport system in general are also subject to sudden fluctuations in demand and capacity. This research synthesizes the mechanisms of airport capacity fluctuations through the analytical formulation of concepts of capacity dynamics, capacity elasticities and capacity stability. It demonstrates the usability of these concepts through, firstly, a case study application to Brussels National Airport and, secondly, the development of a 'proof of concept' decision-support tool for strategic and tactical airport planning. Capacity dynamics and elasticities provide a performance indication as to how quickly capacity is able to change in response to fluctuations brought about by one or more capacity disrupters, whilst capacity stability provides airport planners with a measure of capacity robustness. These three concepts - capacity dynamics, elasticities and stability - contribute to a better a priori understanding of the airport system to be modelled. They demonstrate a better quantification of the impact and sensitivity of all the factors that affect runway capacity. It is also shown how the three concepts can assist in a better quantification of the risk of potential capacity fluctuation within the scope of airport planning. Based on this analytical formulation and quantification, mitigation should be an integral part of any effective airport plan in order to predict better the response to any given potential capacity degradation. It has been found that, from a capacity perspective, an airport becomes less stable the higher its level of performance. This capacity/stability paradox enables the ultimate goal of investment in capacity enhancement to be challenged, and it is legitimately questioned whether a similar investment would not be more worthwhile at secondary airports rather than at major airports

Investigation of strategic capacity issues in the aerospace sector

The business environment is changing fast and radically. Traditional capacity planning has limitations in today’s dynamic environments, particularly from a strategic perspective in the aerospace sector. This document sets out to identify the unique characteristics of the aerospace industry and compare the traditional views of capacity planning and modern concepts in SCP relevant to the sector. Key findings are summarised from an analysis of the literature on strategic capacity planning. The importance of considering demand uncertainty, technology uncertainty and supply uncertainty is highlighted. Two case studies in the aero- engine sector are presented. A collaborative virtual organisation requires Strategic Capacity Planning (SCP) that focuses not only on economies of scale but also on coordination, flexibility and responsiveness. An integrated framework for addressing SCP in the aerospace industry is presented

Sustainable Urban Habitats: A study of the threads that connect design intentions to practical implementation

The absence of a shared definition of the variable that is sustainability is a volatile element in the multi factor equation known to us as the urban landscape. The sustainable infrastructure of our urbanised habitats is a fundamental matter for planners and architects et al, but this is often more of a theoretical concern than a practical application of innovative design implementation. The lack of a shared understanding of sustainable practices contributes to a reliance on conventional orthodoxies, and the ‘play it safe’ approach to the design of public spaces structurally and aesthetically. This study focuses on the methodological and creative threads that connect sustainable design concepts to their viable outcomes. The recent phenomenon of significant population growth within UK regional city centres has emphasised the demand for user-friendly ecologically enhanced public spaces. The synthesis of native species ecology and innovative utilisation of hard landscaping is a fundamental element in the establishment of the concepts of ownership and place. The successful employment of these concepts are debatable. The strands that link worthy sustainable architectural and planning design intentions to their seemingly logical conclusions are frayed, tangled and often severed. Through a selection of comparative case studies and examples of advanced initiatives this paper examines the causes of this entanglement and paradoxically also highlights the innovative capacity of reversing the existing ‘fixed mould of aesthetic convention’

Simulation-based planning of production capacity through integrative roadmapping in the wind turbine industry

The development and effective implementation of a production strategy requires an interdisciplinary planning of products, manufacturing technologies and factory concepts. The integrative roadmapping allows the merging of these planning areas and takes into account the occurring interactions. This article shows the concept and software implementation of the integrative roadmapping for a systematic creation of roadmaps using the example of rotor blade production in the wind turbine industry. To reduce planning time and cost the workflow in the rotor blade production has been transferred to a material flow simulation to estimate the mutual impact on the production capacity by product, technology and factory within the planning phase.DFG/DE 447/99-