A stochastic facility layout model in cellular manufacturing systems.

Facility layout which is the arrangement of facilities in the shop-floor has a great impact on the performance of manufacturing systems, while in volatile manufacturing systems; any kinds of change can degrade the performance of the system and leads to inefficiency of the layout. In this paper, a new mathematical model for layout problems in cellular manufacturing systems has been proposed that considers the stochastic nature of demand. The model minimizes the total material handling cost (both inter-cell and intra-cell material handling cost), and it is solved by two solution approaches, Lingo optimization software, and an enumeration method. The obtained results show the validity of the mathematical model

Incident Reporting in Mashhad Hospitals

Objectives: In this study, our aim was to evaluate and classify the voluntary error reports in the hospitals of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences. Patients have the right to receive health care in accordance to the best standards. Health care carries a risk of harm for patient safety, and with respect to today’s stressful systems with a large number of patients, it would be inevitable. The meaning of risk management is to predict adverse events and reduce their occurrence.Materials and Methods: A voluntary medical error reporting form was designed and approved by the clinical governance team of Mashhad Medical University. They were then distributed inside hospitals in the way in which everyone (health providers and patients) could access them easily. The forms were collected and classified monthly in all wards. Classification was performed on the base of type, outcome and reporter. Data gathering took place from spring to autumn 2012. The data was analyzed by the SPSS software. Results: 2500 errors were extracted from 1000 voluntary error reporting forms of the 12 hospitals of Mashhad Medical University. The most frequent error type was treatment errors (36%) related to drug administration, standard procedures and surgical events. Conclusions: Error reporting as a basic activity has an important role in discovering pitfalls of the health care system. To promote the reporting culture, its non punitive base must become clear for all professors and staff members, because this kind of reporting could lead to fewer medical errors and higher staff awareness about probable errors

Effects of Integration on the Cost Reduction in Distribution Network Design for Perishable Products

Perishable products, which include medical and pharmaceutical items as well as food products, are quite common in commerce and industries. Developing efficient network designs for storage and distribution of perishable products plays a prominent role in the cost and quality of these products. This paper aims to investigate and analyze the impact of applying an integrated approach for network design of perishable products. For this purpose, the problem has been formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear mathematical model that integrates inventory control and facility location decisions. To solve the integrated model, a memetic algorithm (MA) is developed in this study. For verification of the proposed algorithm, its results are compared with the results of an adapted Lagrangian relaxation heuristic algorithm from the literature. Moreover, sensitivity analysis of the main parameters of the model is conducted to compare the results of the integrated approach with a decoupled method. The results show that as the products become more perishable, application of an integrated method becomes more reasonable in comparison with the decoupled one