Operational Management in Hospital Supply Chain

The provided essay explores the importance of operational management in managing and controlling new plans and ideas for development and growth of hospitals. It focuses on the Royal Berkshire Hospital, highlighting its successful management of people and services that help attain long-term financial goals. The hospital's location and layout are also discussed as factors contributing to its success. Additionally, the essay touches on supply chain management, emphasizing the need for proper management to prevent patient suffering and maintain reputation.

Understanding Operations,
Logistics and Supply Chain
Management.

Contents
Contents...........................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
Managing people in operation and supply chains........................................................................2
Location and Layouts..................................................................................................................4
Triple bottom line........................................................................................................................5
Recommendations........................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERNCES...................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Every companies has different operation to perform, manager applies different tools to
manage operations. Operation management is the process related to planning, organising and
supervising all business activities that help in improvement and increasing profitability of
business. In business world, logistic is defined as the management of flow of goods form the
point of manufacture to the place of consumption. In general supply chain is related to the
movement of goods and services this process includes storage of raw material, goods in process
and finished product from one point to another (Beske and Seuring, 2014). To understand the
importance of operation management Royal Berkshire is selected which is one of the biggest UK
hospitals. The hospital is providing operational services since the 1830s, this take especial pride
in their of dementia patients and with more than 800 beds.
In this essay report two topic related to areas of operation, logistic and supply chain
management two selected topic are Managing people in operation and supply chain and Location
and layout. Different theories and techniques that are applied in operation management are
discussed.
MAIN BODY.
The Royal Berkshire Hospital is also one of the National Health Services Hospital
located in Berkshire UK. The hospital was opened in 1839 on side of London road and in 1993
the hospital becomes a trust a NHS Foundation Trust which was commonly known as Royal
Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust. Recently, a data disclose a special feature about hospital that
the accident and emergency department is one of the most effective unit of hospital as compared
to any other hospital of country. The hospital is famous for its services and hygienic
environment. There are approximately 813 inpatient these are further categorise such as 627
acute. 66 paediatrics and 120 maternity. There are more than 5000 staff working to provide
valuable services to needy people, but recently it was reported that number of jobs will be
reduced by 600 that help to reach a saving of £60 million.
The location and layout are the main decision taken by the management of hospital.
Location judgement is consider to be most strategies decision that requires huge financial
investment an these are permanent in nature (Christopher and Peck, 2012). There number of
models and techniques that help manager of Royal Berkshire NHS in making location decision
1

such as break-even analysis, factor rating methods, liner programming and analytical Delphi
Method. On the other side a layout is the manner in which same machine are grouped together to
perform various important activities. So in Hospital when management wants to design service
layouts they mainly focus on two designed structure such as one is developed around customer
services and other is designed around the technology, processing of material etc.
Managing people in operation and supply chains.
This operation management is related to manage the business operation and supply chain
of company or another operational unit. Manager of company make sure that there would be
optimum utilisation of business resources, but it does not affect the quality of services offered.
The main objective of successful supply chain and operation group in a company is to analyse,
monitor complete supply chain and making changes in order to make organisation more
efficiently and increase market position. In hospital, supply chain is related to making available
of important tools and medical services that are offered to needy patients. For example, in Royal
Berkshire NHS if an important medicine is going to finished in a short time, then management
team should make demand from the manufacture to deliver the relevant medicine.
From the Hospital point of view, it is necessary that staff member must be trained and
skilled. Management must provide proper training and education programs that will guide staff
and nurses to manager people accordantly. For example, In Royal Berkshire management focus
to provide best medical services to patient, so they give effective training and awareness
education program about how to make use of different medical tool and equipment’s. As a result
if there is number staffs member in operation handling team the services would be provided well
to the needy patient so they feel satisfaction. So In order to provide best quality services there
must be effective supply chain and effective work of operation management is necessary in
Hospital (Coimbra, 2013).
Quality is crucial for business as it has impact on three most important factor of Hospital
such as on product liability, global implications and company reputations. It is referred that poor
quality and high cost of services will reduce the business growth. Now these days quality
management in healthcare companies becoming crucial issues, so there is a necessity for quality
and safety betterment enterprise permeates health care. So management of every Hospital give
more attention to improve and this is due to governmental regulations, influence of patients and
other management initiative. Management of Royal Berkshire NHS always focuses to improve
2

the quality of services offered by applying total quality management that support to improve the
quality of services through collaborative approach and standardized performance. This is all
because healthcare market is totally moving from producer oriented to customer oriented due to
raising influence of public.
Quality of services and TQM tools of Quality
In general, quality is a perceptual, qualified and personal concept that is totally dependent
on the satisfaction of customer. So in order to maintain the quality of medical services provided
by Royal Berkshire NHS, management has taken various steps that help to increase the quality.
These steps are as follows:
Quality planning: This is related to making of valuable planning refers to developing the
services that will very important to meet the patient’s satisfaction and expectations. It is related
to make sure that needy patient would get the best medical services as compared to other hospital
in London. For example, Royal Berkshire has introduced new services that are related to displays
of report on online registration account of patient. This will reduce the time and cost of hospitals
and patients subordinate no longer needed to stand in line for report (Golicic and Davis, 2012).
Quality assurance: This concept is related to making sure that Hospital would provide
and maintain a high quality of health care and this is basically done by continuously measuring
the effectiveness of the company that offer those services.
Quality control: This steps is related to fulfil the quality responsibility of the product or
services offered by Royal Berkshire NHS in to large number of Patients. Control process is done
with the help of tools such as proper inspection and operational auditing. For Example, In
Hospital the management focus to control the excess use of luxury machinery services such as,
use of ECG, CT scan Machine.
Quality Improvement: This is considering to an essential step that is related to
improving quality of services. In Royal Berkshire, management and research and development
departmental work together to improve quality of services. For example, researcher identifies the
better ways or new techniques in order to provide the authentic report of Blood pressure.
Some of the total quality management techniques that are implemented in hospital are
described below:
Pie chart and bar graphs: Basically, this is used by companies to determine and identify the
areas that are resulting best for the companies. For example, In Royal Berkshire NHS
3

management uses this pie charts and bar graph to keep record about the number of patient getting
treatment for cancer.
Histograms: This is related to accurate and appropriate presentation of numerical data that
display the result of only single variable. For example, In Royal Berkshire provides online report
facilities to their patients, so they make use of Histogram about the satisfaction level of client
from these services.
Force filed analysis: This tool was developed by in social science that provides guidelines that
help to determine the factors that have influence different situation in an organisation. This
analysis also help to identify the factor that are moving towards the attainment of companies’
goals and which are hinder to the performance (Force filed analysis, 2018).
Location and Layouts
In order to start up any kind of business the very first thing the owner need to do is to plan
the location and the layout of the business where different operational activities, logistic and
supply chain management will take place so as to earn the maximum output for which the
organization is being planned to set up. Operational activities refer to set of functional activities
like manufacturing, distributing, marketing and selling of products and services. Moreover
logistics refers to the process of managing and acquiring resources as well as it is the process of
storing and distributing of products and services to the final customers (Khan, Christopher and
Creazza, 2012). Whereas supply chain management is all about the broad range of activities
which involves right from planning, controlling, and execution of raw material in to final
products so as to distribute it to the final customers in a cost effective manner. So in order to
understand this entire concept broadly Royal Berkshire NHS service hospital must make the
proper analysis and identification of location and layout where the business needs to be set up.
Thus it can be done by applying proper theories and concept to it which is explained below:
Alfred Weber’s Theory of the location of Royal Berkshire NHS: As per Alferd this theory
specifies that several factors need to be taken into consideration while setting out optimal
location which would result in minimizing the manufacturing cost. Whereas, while setting up the
point of location for industry it must be taken into consideration three essential factors which
would help in minimizing the cost of labour and transportation and they are mentioned below:
The very first point this theory specifies that the point of optimal transportation must be based on
the cost of distance to the raw material index. In addition to this it must also be bases on the ratio
4

of weight to intermediate products to the finished products (Mangan, Lalwani and Lalwani,
2016).
 The second factor which the Royal Berkshire NHS must take into consideration while
planning location of industry is labor distortion. It means that labor cost must be lower
and favorable which could easily justify greater transport distance while carrying out
supply chain management.
 Whereas the third essential factor which the Royal Berkshire NHS must take into
consideration while planning out its location of business agglomeration. It means that
firm should be able to get enough of demand and support services in the form of new
investment. Like facilities that build and services machine and could be able to render
financial services etc.
Thus, overall it can be concluded that issues of industry location is increasingly becoming
relevant in today’s modern era. So focusing only on Web rain model could help the Royal
Berkshire NHS in justifying greater transport supply chain management distance for unexploited
raw materials and for cheap labour.
Triple bottom line
In business, triple bottom line is defined as a broad concept that is usually related to the financial
bottom line of that also includes social and environmental reflections. With the help of triple
bottom line management of large Hospital like Royal Berkshire are able to measure a degree of
economic values, its environmental impact and social responsibilities (Ptak and Schragenheim,
2016). Some promoter for monetizing all scopes of the multiple bottom line, including social
safety or ecological harm. While a mutual unit would type effects simple, there are oppositions
to putting endangered species and other valuable grounds. There are some measures that have an
impact on economic, environmental and social factors such as,
Economic Measure:
 Average incomes
 Revenue by Hospitality sector
 Employment distribution by sector
Environmental Measure:
 Amount of waste generated for Hospital
 Use of post-consumer and recycled material
5

 Water and electricity consumptions
Social Measure:
 Median household income
 Average Life expectancy
 Education level
Thus from the above mention measure it has been identified that Royal Berkshire hospital
has its main focus to provide best medical facilities and services to patients. On the other side
they also want to earn profit by making sure that there would be no impact on economic,
environmental and social condition of nation. Such as economic measure are related to the total
amount of revenue earned by hospital during a time period and the total number of job offered by
Royal Berkshire to the common people. Environmental measure is related to maintain proper
management of waste material that may reason to destroy the surrounding (Rushton, Croucher
and Baker, 2014). This measure also helps management of Royal and Berkshire that water must
be utilised according to the needs and electricity shall be consumed in effective manner as these
are limited resources. In case if waste level is too high from Hospital then management need to
think on it and make valuable changes to maintain hygienic condition in and outside hospital.
Whereas social measure is related to actual income of people and the education level that a
patient subordinate must have. This is also related to average life expectancy ratio of people
living in nation and at global level.
Recommendations
The Royal Berkshire is one of the biggest Hospital in London that provide medical service
for number of diseases. Management of Hospital perform different operation management
function and maintain supply chain that helps to store medicine and other medical equipment.
The main focus of management is to manage people and maintain quality of services that are
helpful in attaining long and short term financial goals. The main reason for achieving so much
popularity in short time is just because of location and layout of hospital due to which patients do
not found any difficulty. The layout of Royal Berkshire is arranged in a proper manner that all
necessary medical services and facilities are available at a single place. For all the above
mention reason this has been ascertain that hospital is doing well in nation and is famous at
global level because of new services such as online report effective management of ECG and CT
scan Machine.
6

CONCLUSION
From the above essay, it has been concluded that operation management is very important to
manage, control and implement of new plans and ideas for development and growth of Hospitals.
It is also very important that supply chain must be properly managed otherwise patient would
suffer that may reduce the reputation of Royal Berkshire.
7

REFERNCES
Books and Journals:
Beske, P. and Seuring, S., 2014. Putting sustainability into supply chain management. Supply
Chain Management: an international journal. 19(3). pp.322-331.
Christopher, M. and Peck, H., 2012. Marketing logistics. Routledge.
Coimbra, E. A., 2013. Kaizen in logistics and supply chains. USA: McGraw-Hill Education.
Golicic, S. L. and Davis, D. F., 2012. Implementing mixed methods research in supply chain
management. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics
Management. 42(8/9). pp.726-741.
Heaslip, G., 2013. Services operations management and humanitarian logistics. Journal of
Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management. 3(1). pp.37-51.
Khan, O., Christopher, M. and Creazza, A., 2012. Aligning product design with the supply chain:
a case study. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal. 17(3). pp.323-336.
Mangan, J., Lalwani, C. and Lalwani, C. L., 2016. Global logistics and supply chain
management. John Wiley & Sons.
Ptak, C. A. and Schragenheim, E., 2016. ERP: tools, techniques, and applications for integrating
the supply chain. Crc Press.
Rushton, A., Croucher, P. and Baker, P., 2014. The handbook of logistics and distribution
management: Understanding the supply chain. Kogan Page Publishers.
Online
Force filed analysis. 2018. [Online] Available Through:
<https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_06.htm>
8