Redesigning the Hospital Supply Chain for Enhanced Performance Using a Lean Methodology

Abstract

The supply chain of medicines is a fundamental component of the health care system. It requires a good management in order to enhance hospital performance. This paper describes a model of designing the distribution network of health products within hospitals. Different scenarios are studied using multi-criteria analysis in order to identify the most appropriate design of the hospital supply chain in terms of costs reduction, accessibility and quality of care improvement. Purpose: Define the most performing supply chain design based on three criteria: costs, accessibility and quality. Design/methodology/approach: The analytic hierarchy process (AHP): a structured technique that assist decision makers to choose the best solution in complex situations taking in account multiple decision criteria. Findings and Originality/value: This paper proposes to compare between six organizational scenarios of the hospital distribution network and in the end, to choose the most appropriate one based on three criteria: quality of services, accessibility and costs. Based on the AHP method, among the healthcare supply chain designs reviewed in the case study, the highest performance for pharmacies grouping is obtained by reducing costs and increasing the health products availability and quality. This grouping doesn't concern all the medicines and medical devices but only a part of them. The three organizational scenarios that represents the grouping of all health products (the second, the fourth and the fifth) occupy the last three ranks. The actual situation occupies the third rank. That is to say, that the reorganization of the hospital distribution network is required to improve the hospital performance. Originality/value: The use of the AHP method to choose the most appropriate design of healthcare supply chain in a case study based on three decision criteria: costs, accessibility to health products and quality. The originality of the model is the assessment of performance in the light of the presumed perception of all actors of hospital (patients, medical staff and managers).

WOA: Wombat Optimization Algorithm for Solving Supply Chain Optimization Problems

“…The community of wombats in the form of these vectors together makes the WOA population, which can be mathematically modeled using a matrix accord-ing to Equation (1). At the beginning of the implementation of the algorithm, the position of each wombat in the problem-solving space is randomly initialized using Equation (2).…”

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Performance analysis model for service supply chains : case of the retirement supply chain

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