Development of an integrated medical supply information system

The integrated medical supply inventory control system introduced in this study is a hybrid system that is shaped by the nature of medical supply, usage and storage capacity limitations of health care facilities. The system links demand, service provided at the clinic, health care service provider's information, inventory storage data and decision support tools into an integrated information system. ABC analysis method, economic order quantity model, two-bin method and safety stock concept are applied as decision support models to tackle inventory management issues at health care facilities. In the decision support module, each medical item and storage location has been scrutinised to determine the best-fit inventory control policy. The pilot case study demonstrates that the integrated medical supply information system holds several advantages for inventory managers, since it entails benefits of deploying enterprise information systems to manage medical supply and better patient services.     

Managing challenges in social care service triads – Exploring public procurement practices of Dutch municipalities

Buying services in a triad constellation is associated with challenges related to quality control, performance monitoring, and a deteriorating information position for the buyer. There is growing attention for service triads in Supply Chain Management (SCM) literature. However, these studies are mainly theoretical. The studies suggest to manage the identified challenges by monitoring supplier performance, maintaining a strong position in the service triad, developing collaborative trusting relationships, using outcome-based contracts, and aligning incentives between buyer and suppliers. Empirical studies on service triads and management mechanisms are rare, especially in a public procurement context. We study the application of management mechanisms in a public procurement context where 393 Dutch municipalities each had to contract social care service providers at the same time. This context allows us to study which of the management mechanisms proposed in literature are actually employed in a public procurement context, and whether other mechanisms are applied that are not addressed in the literature. We find municipalities deviate from traditional bureaucratic procurement procedures and apply a relational approach to the procurement procedure, including establishing social contracts, to cope with buyer challenges in service triads. Furthermore we identify municipalities apply ex post competition to drive up service quality through tendering framework agreements and allowing clients to choose their care provider of choice. This mechanism of ex post competition through the use of framework agreements has not been suggested in service triad literature before, and may be an effective mechanism in other service triads to address service quality and customer needs fulfilment issues.     

Recruitment and retention in front‐line services: the case of childcare

This article highlights how problems of recruitment and retention in front‐line services create a particular challenge to traditional HRM models and solutions. Private day nurseries make an interesting example of the challenges facing managers in the service sector as the combination of a feminised workforce, a price‐sensitive service, public–private competition and state regulation create particular difficulties. We report on a study of 33 day nurseries involving interviews with managers and employees over an eight‐month period. Our findings show that childcare providers have to cope with recruitment and retention problems associated with high‐end interactive service provision compounded by gender segregation and small business characteristics. Our analysis of employer and employee perspectives examines labour market issues affecting recruitment, and categorises the reasons for staff turnover into internal ‘push’ factors, external ‘pull’ factors, outside factors and functional turnover.     

降低ASC的售后配件库存方法

为切实降低特约售后服务中心的配件库存,提出了基于多层次多维度的ABC分类法,并对不同类型配件采取不同库存策略,同时提出针对快速流动配件的预测优化方法和针对呆滞件的信息共享平台的建设。     

管理信息系统在服务备件库存管理中的应用探析

文中以家电售后服务备件管理系统为研究案例,阐明企业建立基于计算机技术和网络技术的备件管理信息系统的必要性,探析几种典型管理信息系统在服务备件库存管理中的应用。     

Crowdshipping in last mile deliveries: Operational challenges and research opportunities

This paper contributes to the emerging body of research on crowdshipping, which is a collaborative strategy that distributes delivery tasks to a mass of actors that act as ordinary couriers, aiming at reducing delivery costs and supporting sustainability. The study focuses on last mile delivery activities, where numerous app-based delivery platforms have recently emerged. The paper provides an overview of the operational characteristics of these platforms based on an in-depth study of a sample of major crowdshipping services (state-of-practice) and a comprehensive review of the state-of-research. After comparing platform services and characteristics, we identified four core (typological) factors that differentiate services: platform (service) type, delivery type, delivery mode, and pricing strategy; and six categories for service challenges and opportunities. Moreover, the review of the state-of-research synthesized their findings with respect to the identified practical challenges to discover opportunities for future work. Overall, the study found that there is a mismatch between practical challenges and scientific solutions. The literature has not addressed all challenges identified in practice, such as couriers’ work conditions and pricing, which are still unresolved issues. The majority of articles were exploratory in nature with their findings based on hypothetical random instances. More research is needed with empirical case studies to evaluate the service net effects on each actor (e.g., senders, receivers, couriers, and platforms) in particular, and on the society in general, in terms of traffic externalities, quality of life, cost and revenue. The paper ends with a discussion of promising areas for future research.     

Irregular workloads with MRP systems: Some causes and consequences

Material Requirements Planning (MRP) systems have been widely applied in industry to better manage multiproduct, multistage production environments. Although many applications have been quite successful, much is still left to the planner's intuition as to how to assure that master schedules, component lot sizes, and priorities realistically conform to the capacity limits at individual work centers. Capacity issues may indeed be the soft spot in MRP logic.This paper explores some possible causes of irregular workload patterns when using an MRP system. Better insight on which factors cause temporary bottlenecks could help managers better assess the vulnerability of their plants to this problem. It might also suggest ways of dampening peaks and valleys. The problem setting is a multistage environment; several products are made from various subassemblies and parts. Each shop order is routed through one or more capacitated work centers. An order is delayed either by temporary capacity shortages or the unavailability of components. Of course, the second delay can be caused by capacity problems previously encountered by the shop orders of its components.Seven experimental factors are tested with a large-scale simulator, and five performance measures are analyzed. The factors are the number of levels in the bill of material, the average load on the shop, the average lot size, the choice of priority rule, demand variability, the use of a gateway department, and the degree of equipment specialization. We have one measure of customer service, two for inventory, and two for workload. The workload measures are unconventional, since our interest is when workload variability occurs and how it affects inventory and customer service.The simulator has been developed over the course of eight years, and since this study has been further enhanced to handle many more factors. The simulator was validated recently with real data at two manufacturing plants. It is quite general, in that the bills of material, shop configuration, routings, worker efficiencies, and operating rules can be changed as desired.An initial screening experiment was performed, whereupon the average load and priority rules were not statistically significant at even the .05 level. A full factorial analysis with two replications was then conducted on the five remaining factors. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistical tests have been performed.The results confirm that workload variability can have a detrimental impact on customer service and inventory. The following structural changes to the manufacturing system can be beneficial, but tend to be more difficult to achieve. More BOM levels improve customer service, but increase inventory and capacity bottlenecks. Resource flexibility is a powerful tool to reduce workload variability. Capacity slack averaging much over 10% is wasteful, having no benefits for inventory and customer service. In general, revising the routing patterns only, such as creating more dominant paths, will not give big payoffs. The following procedural changes are easier to implement. Master schedules which smooth aggregate resources are an excellent device to reduce workload variability. Even with a smooth MPS, debilitating workload variability can still occur due to the design of the BOM, lot size, and leadtime offset parameters. Selecting a priority rule does not seem to be of overriding importance compared to master scheduling and component lot sizing. These findings must be considered within the context of the range of plant environments encompassed by this study.     

ABC法在4S汽车备件库存管理中综合应用

随着国内汽车行业的快速发展,4S行业竞争日趋激烈,其利润逐步由销售转向汽车维修服务领域。所以,适当的备件库存对于快速、及时解决汽车故障,往往起到决定性的作用。然而,过剩的备件库存,又将影响流动资金占用。对4S企业来说,备件库存管理的好坏,将成为决定4S企业生存的关键因素。通过对4S行业及服务备件管理基本理论的研究．提出一种综合运用ABC分类管理的方法,结合计算机技术加以实现,为4S企业在激烈的行业竞争中．快速确定企业的库存方案和订货方案提供技术支持：     

Stepping into the kitchen: lay clients as co-producers of a professional service

This study examines the implications for service organizations and their staff of clients’ involvement as co-producers of a professional service. Two female infertility clinics were analysed, one using micro-surgery (MS) and the other in-vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques. These differed on the dimension of patients’ involvement in the delivery of treatment. In the MS clinic patients were ‘passive’ recipients of treatment, whereas in the IVF clinic patients were required to partake as co-producers in the delivery of the medical service. Thus, reflected here are two different forms of client–provider interface, which the results show to have different implications. Bringing the clients, as co-producers, ‘into the kitchen’ where service is prepared (IVF) was found to involve issues associated with the lay client–professional provider work interactions, like perceptions of performance, functional work behaviour (conflicts, poor co-ordination, etc.), lower work/service satisfaction of staff and clients, and coping with service uncertainty. These and other implications for front-line service are examined and discussed.     

Inventory buffers in recoverable manufacturing

Recoverable manufacturing is becoming an increasingly important alternative to firms as they develop environmentally sound strategies aimed at minimizing waste and resources. It helps minimize costs and conserve resources through methods such as extending product life cycles via remanufacturing which uses only a fraction of the resources and energy associated with a new product. In this study the creation and location of inventory buffers (delay buffers) and their impact on other managerial operating decisions is examined in the context of a remanufacturing environment. It is shown that inventory buffer decisions are significantly impacted by the method used to release parts from the disassembly stage to the remanufacturing stage within the remanufacturing environment. Based on observations and on discussions with managers in remanufacturing facilities several managerial propositions are stated. These propositions are examined, via a simulation model of an operating facility, and recommendations as to the inventory buffer to use in conjunction with the disassembly release policy (for parts) are made for the remanufacturing environment.     

基于分类管理的汽车服务备件库存结构优化

本文详细介绍了汽车服务备件的经营模式，并在这个基础上提出了我国汽车服务备件的典型库存结构和物流结构。然后本文通过一个两阶段分类的方法，结合供应链联合库存管理的思想，对我国现阶段基于4S模式的汽车服务备件库存结构进行了优化。     

The impact of buyer-supplier relationship quality and information management on industrial vending machine benefits in the healthcare industry

Despite the calls for a deeper understanding of SCM in the healthcare industry, theoretical research focused on healthcare buyer-supplier collaboration, specifically inventory management issues, remains nascent and fragmented. Although slow to change, healthcare organizations have begun to consider alternative inventory management systems to improve inventory control and patient care. Industrial vending machines (IVM) can help healthcare organizations address inventory management issues. Grounded in transaction cost economics and contingency theory, this research develops and empirically tests a model that highlights the critical role of information management in the link between buyer-supplier relationship quality and performance outcomes within the context of IVM implementation and use in the healthcare industry. Based on survey data from healthcare managers, results indicate that both information management and relationship quality are tied to a series of benefits in the context of collaborative buyer-supplier IVM agreements.     

Shareholder value implications of service failures in triads: The case of customer information security breaches

The rise in front-end service outsourcing in recent years, despite its advantages, has also exposed buyer firms to unique challenges. One of the most salient risks for buyer firms in service triads is service failure due to the service provider. Indeed such service failures may be more costly for firms due to the greater relational and operational costs that may arise from the presence of the third-party provider. Yet, neither the services literature nor extant operations literature on service triads has paid much attention to the financial consequences to the buyer firm – i.e., service risks – of such service failures in triads. To fill this gap, we investigate the financial penalty of service failures due to the service provider using the event study methodology and a sample of 146 customer information security breaches as our empirical context. Analysis of the abnormal returns reveals that service failures due to the front-end service provider lead to greater shareholder losses than such failures due to the buyer firm. This provides important new insight into the financial risks arising from outsourcing front-end services. Further, we investigate the ability of the buyer firm's employee and financial resources to temper these shareholder losses. We find that buyer firm employee productivity can moderate the greater financial penalty associated with such triadic service failures but that buyer firm leverage tends to not have such a mitigating effect. This provides new guidance for theory and practice regarding how buyer firms can position themselves to buffer the financial risks arising from service failures due to front-end service providers.     

大型联合企业备件库存控制策略研究

建立了零备件库存两级多点存储模式的最佳备件库存模型,给出了总库存成本（库存成本与转运成本之和）最小时的各库存点与仓库的最优订货策略的求解算法,提出了以服务水平为约束,以库存成本和转运成本最小为目标的规划模型．给出了已知订货批量,求最优订货点的算法,并通过实际应用验证了该算法的有效性。     

企业内部二级库存系统中库存策略比较研究

针对随机需求下企业内部由中心仓库和下设的地区仓库组成的二级库存系统,运用推动式库存模型通过对相同服务水平下有中心仓库和无中心仓库两种情况的成本进行比较分析,来确定在企业内部二级库存系统中是否也设立中心仓库,以供决策者对库存策略进行合理规划。     

Implementing the third way

This article examines the transfer of NPM strategies by comparing Service Charter initiatives in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. These three countries, together with Canada and New Zealand,are partofwhathas beendescribedas the ‘core’ new public management (NPM) policy community (Common 1998). Service Charters are an NPM strategy intended to change the culture of public service delivery to focus on the needs of the users, identified as ‘clients’ or ‘customers’. The objectives are to make service providers more responsive to users by guaranteeing specific standards for service delivery, providing a substitute for competition and a benchmark for measuring service quality. The first section examines the historical and political context of the development of the Citizen's Charter and Service First programmes in the UK, customer service plans in the USA and Government Service Charters in Australia. The second section explores the similarities and differences between these charter initiatives based on analysis of public documents. There is evidence of convergence at the ideological level as managerial values underpin the service charter frameworks in all three jurisdictions (Walsh 1994; Pollitt 1995; Kettl 1997). Despite drawing from a similar toolkit influenced by private sector techniques, significant differences between the country contextshaveresultedindivergent strategies. Timing in the three countries examined suggests that national politics rather than global policy convergence is more significant in explaining the development of service charters. This case study provides evidence of policy transfer rather than policy convergence (Common 1998). The final section considers the limitations of the customer service model. Monitoring quality iscentral to theprogrammes in all three countries. Performance monitoring is essentially a quantitative methodology that requires criteria and indicators for measuring the quality of service delivery and programme outcomes. Two problems are considered. The first is the difficulty of specifying and measuring service quality. The second is that quality indicators derived from services marketing and management research do not take into account the characteristics of public services.     

Strategic operations management decisions and professional performance in U.S. HMOs

Professional service organizations are becoming an increasingly important segment of the service sector in the U.S. but little attention has been paid to the management of these organizations, particularly in relation to technical performance. This paper reports the findings of a survey of managers of Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) which related operations management decisions about organization, workforce management, quality management and planning and control, to clinical process and outcome performance.This research demonstrates that managerial decisions do affect clinical performance in HMOs. These findings have implications for both researchers and practitioners. For researchers, the study provides a framework for future research on the important link between management decisions and technical performance in professional service organizations. For practitioners, this study suggests that technical performance will be enhanced when professional work is appropriately managed.     

供应链环境下的可维修备件共享库存和集中维修模式

对于资产密集的流程式生产企业而言,设备库存管理和设备维修管理是企业管理的重要工作。传统上企业分散管理和维修的方式通常会导致高库存成本和低服务率的同时存在。本文研究同一区域同类企业同类备件的库存共享和集中维修模式,针对不同企业和同一集团下的不同工厂提出了相适应的共享库存管理模式。     

The power of coworkers in service innovation: the moderating role of social interaction

Service innovation is central to firms when explaining business success and competitiveness. However, little is known about how useful feedback and help/support from coworkers affect desirable innovation outcomes. This study draws on a conceptual model and theorizes that firms’ support of useful feedback from coworkers and coworkers’ help and support along with social interaction would achieve service innovation. In a sample of 382 employees from a large multinational firm, as hypothesized, employees with highly useful feedback and help/support from coworkers exhibited the highest level of firm service innovation. Moreover, managers can enhance this positive relationship by relying more on increased social interaction among employees for innovation performance.