Business Decision Making - A Case Study

This study is a qualitative research approach in volving case study. The study is conducted through an in-depth investigation on the experience of managers in decision making process in a manufacturing company. The study attempts to understand the actual decision making process in business environment and determine how the process differs from the theoretical process laid out in textbooks. The study also tries to identify the pertinent factors contributing to an effective decision-making process focusing on human factors, such as psychological traits, behaviour and attitudes. The respondents of the study comprised of four managers, three male and one female managers from four different departments. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews, which were tape-recorded with permission. Besides interviews, a few assessments were also given to managers to help understand their characteristics and attitudes in making decision. The assessments comprised of Jung's Personality Typology (as operationalized in the Myers-Rriggs Type Indicator), creative assessment and conflict management style assessment. Findings showed that apart from Information Communication Technology (ICT) facilities, human factors such as personality traits and psychological types also influence decision making. Findings also indicate that managers exhibit a few similar traits in making decision, such as resourceful, observant, enthusiastic, open-minded and innovative

A Simulation-Based Optimization Framework for Improving Customer Waiting Time During Vehicle Inspection Process

Issue of long customer waiting time is a common issue at service industry. A Vehicle Inspection Centre (VIC) is one of the service industries that faces this issue and has a significant impact on quality of service. The management of VIC has been struggling in applying alternative solutions to reduce the customer waiting time, but the long customer waiting time still occurs. Therefore, the management requires an appropriate tool that contributes to improve customer waiting time problem and indirectly improving quality of service. To assist the management, a simulation-based optimization framework is presented in this paper to mitigate the issue of long customer waiting time. The preliminary result of the implementation of the framework on customer waiting time at VIC is also presented in this paper

An Analysis of Dust Explosion Incidents in Industries and Mitigation Best Practices within Malaysia

The trends of process safety incident have been put in the statistical research and development in order to prevent and mitigate the phenomenon. One of the incident are known as dust explosion that represent a constant hazard to industries including any manufacturing using and handling of combustible dust materials. Lack of sharing and know how on best practices in managing the workplace to avoid this phenomenon happening throughout the industries. The severity and the consequences of not practicing it before it happens were not been fore seen by the process team until it too late. This present paper discusses the best practices in managing the hazards from the catastrophes to be happening again. In addition, the mitigation response was also being explored thoroughly by database of best practices. The work summarizes in Microsoft Access database related to incident were tabulated according to the types of industries involved in dust explosion, the equipment that involved, the types of combustible dust, the sources of ignition points, and also the impact from the incident. All incident being summarized from the literature review and also documentation review respectively. Triangulation method was used in managing the data and verified with industries by having interview session, observation and documentation review

Analysis of MCLP, Q-MALP, and MQ-MALP with Travel Time Uncertainty Using Monte Carlo Simulation

This paper compares the application of theMonte Carlo simulation in incorporating travel time uncertainties in ambulance location problem using three models: Maximum Covering Location Problem (MCLP), Queuing Maximum Availability Location Problem (Q-MALP), andMultiserver QueuingMaximum Availability Location Problem (MQ-MALP). A heuristic method is developed to site the ambulances.The models are applied to the 33-node problem representing Austin, Texas, and the 55-node problem. For the 33-node problem, the results showthat the servers are less spatially distributed in Q-MALP andMQ-MALPwhen the uncertainty of server availability is considered using either the independent or dependent travel time. On the other hand, for the 55-node problem, the spatial distribution of the servers obtained by locating a server to the highest hit node location is more dispersed inMCLP and Q-MALP.The implications of the new model for the ambulance services system design are discussed as well as the limitations of the modeling approach

A SIMULATION-BASED DEA FRAMEWORK TO IMPROVE CUSTOMER'S WAITING TIME AT VEHICLE INSPECTION CENTRE

A long queue and waiting time have become the most common issue that usually happened at service industry. Similarly, in a vehicle inspection centre (VIC), a higher quality of service is measured by a short and acceptable waiting time. Typically, the long waiting time among customers is resulted by some factors, which are customer arrivals, human factors, and maintenance strategy. However, this study only focuses on customer arrival factor that contributed to this problem. This paper is a review of work based on a study conducted at VIC in Selangor, Malaysia. A framework of simulation-based DEA model is proposed to determine the most efficient strategy to reduce the problem of customer waiting time at VIC. The developed framework aims to help the management in decision making to improve the operation of the VIC current system in future

DENGUE OUTBREAK: A SYSTEM DYNAMICS APPROACH

Dengue is an endemic disease that occurs across Malaysia with a large number of fatality cases being recorded each year. The Ministry of Health Malaysia has came out with the national dengue strategic plan in controlling the disease outbreak. Therefore, this study aims to develop a system dynamics model of dengue to help policy makers in simulating the effectiveness of the public health intervention. Simulation model can show the successes and failures of past policies, as well as predicting the consequences of selected policy proposals before their implementation. From this, future research can be done in order to enhance the existing intervention or to prompt new strategy in overcoming the problem

Simulating the impact of an increase in patient volume on a government emergency department in Malaysia

This paper explores the potential of computer simulation model to access the effect of patient increase to emergency department performance and the patient flow.A simulation model of emergency department is developed based on discrete even simulation and system dynamics modeling approach to capture the behavior of an integrated system.Several scenarios are conducted to help management determine the required resources due to patient: volume increase that will not breach the national target time for patient to be attended to in emergency department.Results from the scenarios show that a 7% increase of patients affects most of the performance measures.In addition, medical assistants are the important resources in emergency department operations

Penyeimbangan beban kerja di kalangan pemandu lori tangki: Satu kajian kes

Kajian ini membincangkan masalah beban keja seimbang bagi pemandu lori tangki disebuah syarikat pengangkutan yang berpangkalan di Pelabuhan Kelang. Bagi menyeimbangkan jumlah muatan yang perlu dibawa oleh setiap pemandu agar beban kerja adalah sama, satu model pengaturcaraan integer telah dibangunkan dengan mengambilkira beberapa kekangan yang telah dikenal pasti. Antara kekangan tersebut ialah jumlah trip yang dibawa setiap pemandu tidak boleh melebihi jumlah hari bekeja dalam sebulan. Model ini dibangunkan bertujuan menyeimbangkan beban keja dengan memfokuskan kepada jumlah kapasiti yang dibawa bagi setiap pekerja supaya setiap pekerja akan membawa jumlah kapasiti yang seimbang. Model tersebut diselesaikan dengan menggunkan perisian LOG. Kajian ini juga turut memuatkan analisis sensitiviti (what - if scenario) bagi melihat berapakah jumlah pekerja sebenar yang diperlukan bagi mengangkut muatan tersebut. Hasilnya, setiap pemandu lori akan membawa antara 354 - 408 tan setiap bulan dengan bilangan trip setiap pekerja sebanyak 11 - 13 trip. Dapatan kajian ini berguna kepada pihak pengurusan syarikat dalam mnjanakan pengagihan tugasan bulanan yang lebih berkesan

Modelling an outpatient unit in a clinical health centre using discrete event simulation

This paper describes a project paper of a simulation modelling course.It presents the potential of computer simulation in modelling the current performance of an outpatient department of a clinical health centre in a rural area.The model was run using Arena student version 14.5.From the 60 replication length run, the obtained result shows that the patient’s waiting time is 26.4 minutes, which is lesser than the established standard waiting time of 30 minutes

A proposed simulation optimization model framework for emergency department problems in public hospital

The Emergency Department (ED) is a very complex system with limited resources to support increase in demand.ED services are considered as good quality if they can meet the patient’s expectation.Long waiting times and length of stay is always the main problem faced by the management.The management of ED should give greater emphasis on their capacity of resources in order to increase the quality of services, which conforms to patient satisfaction.This paper is a review of work in progress of a study being conducted in a government hospital in Selangor, Malaysia.This paper proposed a simulation optimization model framework which is used to study ED operations and problems as well as to find an optimal solution to the problems. The integration of simulation and optimization is hoped can assist management in decision making process regarding their resource capacity planning in order to improve current and future ED operations