A new standardization model for physician staffing at hospitals

Effective productivity management of mixed flower farms

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the issue of low yields in the packinghouses of green ornamentals and cut flowers due to the high rate of crops waste. Waste may be caused by pests, diseases and extreme weather or environmental conditions that are not under the farmer’s control. Other causes may relate to work processes as follows: irrigation, spraying, harvesting, handling, transportation, sorting, bundling and packaging.

Design/methodology/approach

The farm under study is a private owned business managed by the owner’s family members with growing area of 22 ha and eight daily workers. The farm produces about 2.5m units (flower stems) per year. The farm represents a typical flower farm in Israel. A costing model and decision rules were developed to identify the critical waste rate that will consider being economic to ship to the market. The model takes into account the production process, the production yield, the operational costs and sales price and calculates the breakeven point. A simulation model was developed to verify the relationships between waste rate to the total process time per stem and flow time.

Findings

Results show that the critical waste rate for Ruscus, Antirrhinum, Aralia and Aspidistra crops is 16, 74, 22 and 39 percent, respectively. The total process time per harvested stem decreases as the waste rate increases.

Originality/value

A working model was developed to determine the waste threshold rate and support the farmer in day-to-day economic decisions regarding shipment to the market and effective management of his workers.

Hospital capacity management based on the queueing theory

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the contributions of queueing theory to hospital capacity management to improve organizational performance and deal with increased demand in the healthcare sector.

Design/methodology/approach

Models were applied to six months of inpatient records from a university hospital to determine operation measures such as utilization rate, waiting probability, estimated bed capacity, capacity simulations and demand behavior assessment.

Findings

Irrespective of the findings of the queueing model, the results showed that there is room for improvement in capacity management. Balancing admissions and the type of patient over the week represent a possible solution to optimize bed and nurse utilization. Patient mixing results in a highly sensitive delay rate due to length of stay (LOS) variability, with variations in both the utilization rate and the number of beds.

Practical implications

The outcomes suggest that operational managers should improve patient admission management, as well as reducing variability in LOS and in admissions during the week.

Originality/value

The queueing theory revealed a quantitative portrait of the day-by-day reality in a fast and flexible manner which is very convenient to the task of management.

Hand-held computers to increase accuracy and productivity in agricultural work study

Purpose

– Labor is the largest single cost contributor in agriculture. Accurate estimation of labor requirements is, thus, a key to cost reduction. Work measurement is the professional discipline for this type of estimations, in the industrial engineering domain. Horticulture, however, lays a substantial barrier to work and, thus, to work measurement. Till harvesting, its products – fruits/flowers, are in fixed positions, and for all tasks the workers have to arrive at the plant. The purpose of this paper is to develop, test and analyze a system to perform horticultural work study in agricultural environments in order to accurately estimate the required amount of labor for each activity and to improve productivity.

Design/methodology/approach

– In this paper, the development of an advanced system for work study on a hand-held computer (HHC) platform for horticultural work measurement is presented and an experimental study was conducted. The methodology consists of characteristics of the system platform including hardware, interface and software, development of a dedicated measuring software, a controlled experiment in agricultural environment and a statistical analysis.

Findings

– The study shows that a single surveyor who uses traditional tools is subject to measurement errors, which can be reduced only with the assistance of a second surveyor. The study further shows that the HHC platform enables to avoid this second surveyor – a single surveyor who uses the HHC platform performs as accurate as two surveyors who use traditional tools. Of course, being computers, the HHC platform maintains the advantage of error free data transfer, in practically negligible time.

Originality/value

– This paper presents a unique approach to perform work study in agricultural environment and contributes to minimize the errors accumulated in the process and the manpower required to perform the measurements.