Managing Quality and People in Operations and Supply Chain

MANAGING QUALITY AND PEOPLE MANAGING QUALITY AND PEOPLE 8/10/2019 Managing Quality and Managing People in Operations and Supply Chain The supply chain is said to be the network between a business and its suppliers for producing and distributing a particular product or service to the end-users. This essay intends to discuss the two main concepts of the supply chain that must be considered by every business to succeed in the delivery of products and services to the end-users. It is also known among patient for offering specialist health care

Running head: MANAGING QUALITY AND PEOPLE
Guy’s Hospital
Managing Quality and People
8/10/2019

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Managing Quality and Managing People in Operations and Supply Chain
The supply chain is said to be the network between a business and its suppliers for producing
and distributing a particular product or service to the end-users. This network is comprised of
diverse activities, information, resources, people, and entities (Monczka, Handfield and
Patterson, 2015). The supply chain also signifies the steps that are involved to get the service
from the original place to the customer. The supply chain elements are comprised of all the
functions that initiate with receiving the order to fulfil the request of the customer. These
functions include the development of the product, operations, promotions, distribution,
accounting, and service to the customer (Li, 2011). This essay intends to discuss the two main
concepts of the supply chain that must be considered by every business to succeed in the
delivery of products and services to the end-users. The two selected concepts of the supply
chain are managing quality and managing people in operation and supply chains. The essay is
focused on identifying the issues related to both the concepts that the selected UK Hospital is
experiencing that is Guy's Hospitals and the theories and tools it uses to overcome them.
Guy's Hospital is one of the known hospitals of the UK which is affiliated with the National
Health Service foundation in the region of Southwark of London. The hospital is also the part
of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and the institution that include the King's
health partners which are an academic centre for health science. The hospital is a well-known
teaching institute and hospital. The time the Tower Wing of the Hospital was constructed it
was considered to be the tallest building of a hospital across the world. According to the
records, it stands at 148.65 meters with 34 floors. The Wing was later called as the tallest
healthcare building in the world by the Belaire in the year 1988 (King’s College London,
2019). As per the reports of 2019, the Tower Wing remains the fifth tallest building of a
hospital across the world. Guy's Hospital ensures that it offers excellent healthcare services

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from two of its teaching hospitals. The hospital offers several health care services to the local
citizens and has incorporated community services in the region Southwark and Lambeth into
the trust. It is also known among patient for offering specialist health care services for the
diseases like cardiac, cancer, orthopaedic services, kidney and it is the home to Evelina
London Children's Hospital (Guy’s Hospital, 2018b).
Managing Quality in Guy’s Hospital - According to the Department for Environment Food
& Rural Affairs (2019), in the United Kingdom, Air Pollution is considered as a major issue
of health concerns. There are several cities of the UK like London that are identified to be
majorly above the recommended and legal levels of air pollution. In the UK, Air pollution is
the main cause of diseases like stroke, heart, asthma, and lung disease, and is projected to
affect 40,000 premature deaths every year that is over 8.3% of deaths that cost around £40
billion yearly (BBC News, 2019). In consideration to Guy's Hospital, it the most air polluted
place among ten hospitals in London's polluted areas. Poor air quality has already resulted in
increasing lung diseases and is being associated with the increasing rate of asthma, cancer,
and dementia. The patients of the hospital are more disposed to the dangerous effects of air
pollution, which results in causing different types of diseases. These issues raised the
requirement for the hospital to introduce different air quality measurement tools and
techniques to reduce the effect and ensure patients healthy life.
As stated by Noe, Hollenbeck, and Wright, (2017), Quality Management performs a crucial
part in the company's growth and performance. It is also considered as the main resource in
the competitive market for enhancing customer relationships and to offer them best
experience. To succeed in the market, quality must be maintained at all the business level.
According to Salibury, (2019), in order to manage the quality of the air in Guy's Hospital, the
management is planning to install different air quality monitoring units. This step is being
planned to be executed because the hospital believes in the continuous improvement concept

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of total quality management for the continuous growth of the business. Under continuous
improvement concept, the hospital plans to regularly identify the issues that can impact the
health and wellness of its patients. After identifying the issues the management of the
hospital take corrective actions such as installing quality monitoring units for air quality
(London SE1, 2019). However, according to Guy’s Hospital (2018a), it follows a quality
assurance technique of the total quality management under which it ensures to offer high-
quality services to the patients. In addition to this, the hospital has established a new quality
theory that is "Together We Care" which is designed to assist the decision of the organization
for the next five years. Besides this, the theory is established to support the management to
respond effectively to the new developments. The development of the strategy is dependent
on the vision and values of the hospital. It has recognized the three priorities for the
organization that are discussed below:
Patients
Properly listening and involving the patients, carers, and families while taking decisions
related to their health or disease.
Identifying better as well as new ways of involving people in their care and health
Making maximum use of digital technology for enhancing how patients receive information
and get access to care.
People
Caring, empowering, and growing the diverse workforce within the organization.
Offering regular excellent care by enhancing the manner everyone works with the
organization (Guy’s and St Thomas, 2019a).

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Handling and extracting best from the estate and finances, such that the organization can
regularly invest for the better services and staff empowerment.
Partnership
Guy's Hospital believes in working together with the local business partners for the
development of society.
Establishing a high level of clinical academic services at the global level by bringing together
education, research, and care
Introducing new treatments, technologies as well as therapies by incorporating with the
academic and commercial partners
Source [(Guy’s Hospital, 2018)]
According to the report, the quality strategies used by Guy's Hospital is considered to be one
of the best theories applied by the hospital in the United Kingdom for enhancing its quality of

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services and wellness of the patient. But, on the other side, as stated by the reports of New
Castle Hospital (2019), the quality management strategy used by it is better in comparison to
Guy's Hospital. Newcastle General Hospital makes use of seven steps as the quality
improvement strategy for providing better services to the patient.
Source [(New Castle Hospital, 2018)]
Newcastle General Hospital is dealing with the issues such as increasing demand for
healthcare services, the air quality of the hospital, etc. due to which it is enforced to adopt this
above discussed strategies to enhance quality within the system. These strategies also offer
direction to the hospital to regularly deliver high-quality health care services for which it is
known among the patients and their families (New Castle Hospital, 2018).
Managing People in Operation and Supply Chain in Guy's Hospital - The workforce
planning strategy 2015-2020 of Guy's Hospital is said to be the integral portion of its
management and performance systems, strategic plans, and business planning. It is comprised
of training, leadership, retention planning, education, recruitment, and innovation (NHS

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Employers, 2018). The Human Resource Business Partners work as one of the parts of
Directorate Management Teams and plan as per the issues, linked with their activity and
finance plans. Guy's Hospital is majorly focused towards triangulating its planning with the
regional as well as national planning of the workforce proposals that it offers to Health
Education South London. However, the organization faces some of the workforce issues and
risk as specified below:
Job Designing/Recruitment issue – Retaining and recruiting suitable staff in order to make
the best utilization of the Hospital's physical facilities is challenging. It is a major issue at all
the sites of the hospital, but the major issue is being experienced in operation theatres,
community rehabilitation, Emergency Department, Nursing, and other specialist services. To
deal with this issue, the organization is majorly involved in contacting with different
consultancies as well as the organization that support in recruiting skilled and experienced
professionals for the specific and specialist services within the organization (Guy’s and St.
Thomas, 2017). Guy's Hospital has planned an innovative method of workforce planning in
association with agency staff employment. The organization has adopted the novel software
ABG that is a people to people economy P2PE platform for the provisional recruitment of the
staff. This temporary method provides a potential solution to the above-identified issue of
recruitment (Theodoulou, Reddy and Wong, 2018).
Furthermore, along with staff planning, Guy's Hospital deals with the issue of Inventory
management. Inventory Management is the procedure of ordering, storing and making use of
inventory of the company. It is comprised of management of raw material and finished
products along with warehousing (Myerson, 2012). To manage the inventory, the businesses
use inventory management software as this software support in avoiding the risk and issues
related to the inventory within the organization such as duplicity, damage, over-ordering, etc.
The inventory management system is also considered as a tool that enables the business to

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track their products in the supply chain. It also enhances the complete range covering from
order placement with the vendor to delivery of the order to the client. The system enables to
map the entire product journey from the manufacturing site to the end-user (Atieh, Kaylani
and Hdairis, 2016).
According to the reports of GS1 UK (2019), in spite of being the most successful as well as
the busiest hospital in the United Kingdom that holds the huge history of healthcare services
it deals with different challenges in its supply chain management and operations
management. Some of the challenges that are experienced by the organization are over-
ordering of the raw material. Under this, the organization purchase raw material and other
equipment for the health care services and did not use the entire purchased slot (Guy’s and St.
Thomas, 2019c). This results in increasing wastage and cost for the business. Besides this, the
wastage results in the disposal of the chemicals at different sites and areas which results in
impacting the environment negatively. To resolve this issue, the company makes use of an
inventory management system under which it uses GS1 standards for identifying all the
ordered and available products. The management of the organization gets involved in the
installation of the automated inventory system at all its centers, allowing a high level of
control as well as visibility. The hospital now makes use of GS1 barcodes and Global Trade
Item Numbers to inimitably classify products (GS1 UK, 2019). This enables them to reduce
the chances of duplicity in the ordering system. In addition to this, the company track and
trace the products and most significantly to evaluate the inventory management system's
performance. The inventory management system has offered organization positive results by
reducing the duplicity as well as decreasing wastage into the system. On the other side, as per
the report of New Castle Hospitals (2018), for managing the inventory into the business,
Newcastle General Hospital adopts regular audit strategy of the inventory. Under this system,
the organization checks the requirement and the availability of the equipment utilized on a

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yearly basis. Besides this, the management of the company recheck the details from the
business partners and employees related to the supply chain operations department, regarding
the availability of the products and equipment. Newcastle General Hospital also provides
training to the staff, for the effective use of the equipment required in the health care services.
Triple Bottom Line - Triple bottom line is said to be a theory that endorses, businesses must
focus on the environment as well as social concerns along with the profit concerns. The triple
bottom line suggests that in place of following singe bottom line, businesses must focus on
three bottom lines that are a planet, people, and profit. Triple bottom line is focused towards
enforcing businesses to be committed to meeting its corporate social responsibilities and
reduce its negative impact over the environment (Slaper and Hall, 2011). The phrase ‘Triple
Bottom Line' was introduced by John Elkington in the year 1994 who is one of the known
management and sustainability consultants (Rothaermel, 2013). The phrase was introduced in
order to measure the performance of American businesses. The motive behind introducing
the triple bottom line phrase is to prove that business not just can manage its profit, but along
with this, it can contribute towards improving the planet as well as lives of people. Guy's
Hospital is majorly involved in following the triple bottom line concept, under which it is
focused towards offering high-quality health services at limited cost with the corporation of
National Health Service foundation. This foundation is focused majorly to offer free health
care services to the citizens of the United Kingdom with the motive to enhance the quality of
care in the country. Working with the foundation allows Guy's Hospital to contribute towards
the development of the society by donating £14 million to the trust (Guy’s and St Thomas,
2019b). In addition to this, the hospital has exerted efforts in reducing its carbon footprint by
65% per patient by adopting different habits such as zero waste to landfills from all its sites
(Guy’s and St Thomas, 2019b). Furthermore, for improving the quality of air, the
organization uses electric vehicles.

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Source [(Guy’s and St Thomas, 2019b)]
Recommendations for Guy’s Hospital - From the above analysis, it has been identified that
Guy's Hospital is dealing with some of the issues related to the quality and managing
workforce within the business. The company is recommended to adopt a benchmark strategy
of the total quality management concept. Under this, the company could set a benchmark that
can be its competitor like Newcastle General Hospital in terms of quality of services and
quality of workforce within the system. Through this, the company will able to get a direction
towards improving quality and hiring a skilled workforce to offer better services to the
patient.
In addition to this, the essay analysis projected that Guy's Hospital is involved in over-
ordering of the products and raw material that are used in offering healthcare services. Under
this, the hospital order products in bulk but does not use all of them which results in
increasing wastage. Therefore, in order to avoid this wastage, Guy's Hospital is recommended
to apply a Japanese technique that is ‘Just in Time' inventory system. This technique support

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business in aligning the ordered raw material from suppliers directly with the scheduled
production. This strategy will support hospital in increasing its efficiency and reducing
wastage by receiving the delivery of the products only when required (Lasry, Dugdale and
Charles, 2014).
The above essay has provided a detailed analysis of two main concepts related to Guy's
Hospital that is quality management and people management in the supply chain and
operation management. The analysis identified that the hospital is recently being involved in
increasing level of air pollution at its sites, which are resulting in increasing pressure from the
related authorities to immediately take actions. The hospital is planning to use air quality
monitoring units. In addition to this, the hospital is experiencing issues related to the
recruitment of professional nurses and other professionals. To overcome the identified issue,
the hospital is recommended to adopt a benchmark strategy to set the standard for improving
quality and hiring skilled employees. Furthermore, the hospital is involved in wasting the
ordered raw material due to over-ordering. To resolve this issue, the company is
recommended to Adopt Just in Time Inventory management strategy to reduce wastage and
manage inventory. In conclusion, it could be said that by using these strategies the company
could improve its performance in comparison to its competitor.

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