Developing Inventory Management Policy for Drugs with Medium and Low Consumption Value in Hospital

บทคัดย่อ วัตถุประสงค์: ยาเป็นทรัพยากรสำคัญในโรงพยาบาล จึงต้องมีการบริหารจัดการให้มีเพียงพอต่อการรักษาผู้ป่วย งานวิจัยนี้มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อกำหนดนโยบายที่เหมาะสมในการจัดการสินค้าคงคลังยาที่มีมูลค่าปานกลางและมูลค่าน้อย วิธีการศึกษา: การวิเคราะห์โดยอาศัยข้อมูลการใช้ยาจริงในอดีตของโรงพยาบาลรัฐกรณีศึกษา และเปรียบเทียบนโยบาย Min/Max ที่โรงพยาบาลใช้ในปัจจุบันกับนโยบายที่ได้จากการทบทวนวรรณกรรม จากงานวิจัยที่ผ่านมาได้มีการศึกษานโยบายการจัดการสินค้าคงคลังที่เหมาะสมของกลุ่มยาในโรงพยาบาลที่มีมูลค่าสูง (ยากลุ่ม A) ไปแล้ว การศึกษานี้มุ่งที่ กลุ่มยาที่มีมูลค่าปานกลาง (ยากลุ่ม B) และกลุ่มยาที่มีมูลค่าน้อย (ยากลุ่ม C) ผลการศึกษา: สำหรับยาที่มีมูลค่าปานกลางและมูลค้าน้อย นโยบาย Min/Max ไม่เหมาะสมเมื่อเทียบกับนโยบายอื่นที่พบในวรรณกรรม โดยนโยบาย Min/Max ซึ่งพิจารณาเพียงปัจจัยด้านปริมาณความต้องการเพียงปัจจัยเดียวโดยไม่สนใจความสำคัญด้านการรักษาจะไม่เหมาะสมเนื่องจากอาจทำให้เกิดการขาดแคลนและเกิดการเก็บสินค้าขึ้นได้  สรุป: พบว่าการกำหนดนโยบายการจัดการสินค้าคงคลังในโรงพยาบาลนั้น ควรจะต้องคำนึงปัจจัยทางด้านความต้องการและความสำคัญในการรักษาไปพร้อมกัน คำสำคัญ: การจัดการสินค้าคงคลัง, โรงพยาบาล, ยา Abstract Objective: Drugs are the important resource of the hospital. The hospital keeps stock and manages drug inventory in order to ensure adequate on-hand inventory for patients. This study aimed to determine inventory policy suitable for drugs with medium and low consumption value. Methods: This study used historical drug demand data of a large government hospital to test the existing Min/Max inventory policy against other policies found in the literature. Since policy suitable for drugs with high consumption value (group A) was known, we focused on drugs with medium (group B) and low (group C) consumption value. Results: For groups B and C, the Min/Max inventory policy was not suitable compared with the others from the literature. This was because it took only the consumption value, the drugs’ clinical importance, into account. The sole Min/Max policy could potentially cause shortage and overstock. Conclusion: To apply a proper inventory management policy for drugs in the hospital, clinical factors, in addition to consumption value, should be taken into consideration. Keywords: inventory management, hospital, drug

Innovation in healthcare services : creating a Combined Contingency Theory and Ecosystems Approach

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to develop an analytical framework used for process development in healthcare services. Healthcare services imply a form of operations management demanding an adapted research approach. This study therefore highlights first in the introduction challenges of healthcare services as a reasoning of this study. It is a type of service that has high societal and therefore ethical concern, but at the same time needs to be carried out efficiently to economise service production resource use. Combined business and ethics concerns need to be balanced in this service supply system. In the literature review that is the bulk of this paper, first, particularities of the service industry processes are considered. This is followed by considering literature on contingency theory to consider the nature of the supply chain context of the healthcare service processes highlighting interdependencies and appropriate technology use. This developed view is then expanded to consider an ecosystems approach to encompass the environment expanding analyses to considering in balanced manner features of business, society and nature. A research model for directing both further researches on the healthcare service industry an innovation of such services in practice is introduced.publishedVersio

Developing Inventory Management in Hospital

Single inventory policy has been applied to entire types of drugs in hospitals, despite several different drug and demand characteristics. Shortages regularly occur, which may affect patients lives, especially when vital drugs are being administered to them. However, hospitals cannot store a large amount of every drug because of limited space and budget. The objective of this study was to develop a hospital inventory management system to minimise the total inventory costs, while maintaining patient safety levels. This study is concerned only with the medicines that have a high consumption value and took place in a large public hospital in Thailand. The most suitable policies are proposed for each drug category with the best performance obtained.The historical demand is classified by drug characteristics, consumption value and clinical importance, as well as the demand characteristics. We applied it and compared it with the current inventory policy (Min/Max), and inventory policies from previous studies, in order to investigate the most suitable inventory policy for each drug category and demand characteristic. The study found that a single inventory management system cannot be effectively applied for all medicines. This is because there are also categories of medicines characterised by their value and clinical importance. This is called the ABC/VEN classification. The inventory management in hospitals should be fitted to drug categories and demand characteristics, which are quite unique in the healthcare supply chain and are different from those applied to [KK1]general manufacturing. [KK1]I put this in to highlight the difference

An integrated shipment planning and storage capacity decision under uncertainty: a simulation study

Purpose – In transportation and distribution systems, the shipment decisions, fleet capacity, and storage capacity are interrelated in a complex way, especially when the authors take into account uncertainty of the demand rate and shipment lead time. While shipment planning is tactical or operational in nature, increasing storage capacity often requires top management’s authority. The purpose of this paper is to present a new method to integrate both operational and strategic decision parameters, namely shipment planning and storage capacity decision under uncertainty. The ultimate goal is to provide a near optimal solution that leads to a striking balance between the total logistics costs and product availability, critical in maritime logistics of bulk shipment of commodity items. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use simulation as research method. The authors develop a simulation model to investigate the effects of various factors on costs and service levels of a distribution system. The model mimics the transportation and distribution problems of bulk cement in a major cement company in Indonesia consisting of a silo at the port of origin, two silos at two ports of destination, and a number of ships that transport the bulk cement. The authors develop a number of “what-if” scenarios by varying the storage capacity at the port of origin as well as at the ports of destinations, number of ships operated, operating hours of ports, and dispatching rules for the ships. Each scenario is evaluated in terms of costs and service level. A full factorial experiment has been conducted and analysis of variance has been used to analyze the results. Findings – The results suggest that the number of ships deployed, silo capacity, working hours of ports, and the dispatching rules of ships significantly affect both total costs and service level. Interestingly, operating fewer ships enables the company to achieve almost the same service level and gaining substantial cost savings if constraints in other part of the system are alleviated, i.e., storage capacities and working hours of ports are extended. Practical implications – Cost is a competitive factor for bulk items like cement, and thus the proposed scenarios could be implemented by the company to substantially reduce the transportation and distribution costs. Alleviating storage capacity constraint is obviously an idea that needs to be considered when optimizing shipment planning alone could not give significant improvements. Originality/value – Existing research has so far focussed on the optimization of shipment planning/scheduling, and considers shipment planning/scheduling as the objective function while treating the storage capacity as constraints. The simulation model enables “what-if” analyses to be performed and has overcome the difficulties and impracticalities of analytical methods especially when the system incorporates stochastic variables exhibited in the case example. The use of efficient frontier analysis for analyzing the simulation results is a novel idea which has been proven to be effective in screening non-dominated solutions. This has provided the authors with near optimal solutions to trade-off logistics costs and service levels (availability), with minimal experimentation times

Responsiveness of the order fulfilment process

This paper discusses evidence from field studies undertaken to investigate the responsiveness of the order fulfilment process in a number of companies. The evidence is analysed in the context of the literature on responsiveness and related areas such as time-based competition. Similarities and differences are analysed across a number of industrial sectors with respect to order fulfilment processes and the interpretation and significance of responsiveness. Generic factors that influence different types of companies are identified. Four components of responsiveness - stimuli, awareness, capabilities and goals - emerge from an analysis of the literature. The field and case study evidence allows the development of more precise definitions and descriptions of each of these components. The study also allows a generic responsiveness framework to be developed that incorporates both strategic and operational viewpoints. The need for more field studies on responsiveness is noted. More work is advocated on the assessment and measurement of responsiveness and on developing appropriate responsiveness interventions, particularly with respect to the order fulfilment process

Supply chain management in health sector in Thailand: a case study

Logistics and supply chain management play an important role in Thailand industry. We believed that logistics and supply chain management could be a means to improve competitive performance in service sector. This paper diagnoses the hospital's internal supply chain and logistics system in Thailand by business process analysis. This paper also investigates the inventory policy. Our results show the unconnected link at the case study's internal supply chain in the medicine inventory system between medicine storeroom in each ward, central warehouse and the hospital purchasing department. 'MSale' is used to represent average monthly demand; however, it does not reflect the end customer. This leads to inaccurate reorder point and order quantity at the central warehouse. The paper illustrates the business process analysis by using Integration Definition (IDEF0). The re-engineering business process will be proposed. Finally a new inventory system and software development for connecting this internal supply chain is presented.logistics; SCM; supply chain management; inventory management; information systems; health sector; hospitals; service industries; Thailand; competitive performance; business process analysis; medicine; warehouses; storerooms; purchasing; MSale values; supply and demand; reordering; order quantities; IDEF0; integration definition for function modelling; re-engineering; software development; economics.