Amer Momani

Lead‐Time Reduction Utilizing Lean Tools Applied to Healthcare: The Inpatient Pharmacy at a Local Hospital

&NA; The healthcare arena, much like the manufacturing industry, benefits from many aspects of the Toyota lean principles. Lean thinking contributes to reducing or eliminating nonvalue‐added time, money, and energy in healthcare. In this paper, we apply selected principles of lean management aiming at reducing the wasted time associated with drug dispensing at an inpatient pharmacy at a local hospital. Thorough investigation of the drug dispensing process revealed unnecessary complexities that contribute to delays in delivering medications to patients. We utilize DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) and 5S (Sort, Set‐in‐order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain) principles to identify and reduce wastes that contribute to increasing the lead‐time in healthcare operations at the pharmacy understudy. The results obtained from the study revealed potential savings of >45% in the drug dispensing cycle time.

Further improvements in some properties of shot peened components using the burnishing process

Abstract Shot peening and burnishing are considered to be cold working processes, where both processes are used to improve some metallic surface properties, due to the plastic deformation induced into these surfaces. The first process causes an increase in the roughness, while the other, in opposition to the first process, improves the smoothness of metallic surfaces. The present work is an attempt to apply the burnishing process onto shot peened components, in order to decrease the roughness of the metallic surface caused by the shot peening process. From the results obtained it was found that the burnishing process not only improves the surface finish, but it also introduces further improvements in surface hardness, fatigue strength and corrosion resistance for the two non-ferrous metals considered in this work, namely aluminium and brass. Accordingly, it can be suggested that burnishing of shot peened components may be used with benefits in industry for further improvements in the properties of metallic surfaces.

A software application for the selection of temperature measuring sensors using the analytic hierarchy process

This study presents a software application that applies the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to objectively select the best temperature sensors. Three industrial applications and seven sensor alternatives are considered. The developed application performs the selection process in a computerised, easy-to-use graphical user interface. The underlying decision method ranks temperature sensors with scores resulting from the synthesis of relative preferences of each alternative at different levels considering independent evaluation criteria. Pair-wise relative comparison matrices collected from experts are embedded and are retrieved according to user specifications. A case study is conducted which involves selecting the best sensor for an automotive catalytic converter. The thermocouple is found to be the most preferred sensor with the largest score of 0.37849, the second ranked sensor is the RTD with a score of 0.34589, and the least preferred sensor is the thermister with a score of 0.27560. Sensitivity analysis shows that the selection of the best sensor is dependent on the relative weights of the criteria as well as the chosen application. AHP is shown to provide a quantitative evaluation method which is simpler, easier and more organised than subjective opinions.

Sliding wear mechanism of ductile materials – Effect of sliding direction reversal

The work presented in this paper tries to shed more light on the mechanism by which ductile surfaces fail and leave the contact surface during loaded pure sliding contact. An extensive experimental program was designed aimed at exploring the role of plastic shear strain accumulation in surface failure. Reversing the direction of strain during testing was the main variable which was facilitated by reversing the sliding direction. Changes in structure deformation morphology and accumulated plastic strain were analyzed. The effect of different sliding direction reversal regimes during testing, compared to unidirectional sliding to the same sliding distance, was thoroughly investigated. Results came to support that plastic strain accumulation is responsible for contact surface failure and, as a result, material loss from the ductile surface during sliding. It was evident, under the test conditions used, that reversing the sliding direction at different predefined sliding distances has resulted in delaying surface failure, resulting in lower wear loss compared to that found under unidirectional sliding. Multiple strain direction reversals resulted in higher beneficial effect in delaying failure. Furthermore, the earlier the sliding reversal is carried out, the better its effect of delaying failure. Findings have been explained in terms of plastic strain accumulation that leads to failure of the surface layer after reaching a certain strain to failure limit.

USING EXPANDED REAL OPTIONS ANALYSIS TO EVALUATE CAPACITY EXPANSION DECISIONS UNDER UNCERTAINTY IN THE CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL INDUSTRY

Capacity expansion generally requires large capital expenditure on illiquid assets. Therefore, decisions to enlarge capacity must support the organisation’s strategic objectives and provide valuable input for the budgeting process. This paper applies an expanded form of Real Options Analysis (ROA) to generate and evaluate capacity expansion strategies under uncertainty in the construction material industry. ROA is applied to different expansion strategies associated with different demand scenarios. Evaluating a wider variety of strategies can reduce risk and sponsor decisions that maximise the firm’s value. The case study shows that the execution of a lead expansion strategy with 10-year intervals under a 50 per cent demand satisfaction scenario produces superior results.

Activities Identification for Activity-Based Cost/Management Applications of the Diagnostics Outpatient Procedures

&NA; One of the most challenging problems facing healthcare providers is to determine the actual cost for their procedures, which is important for internal accounting and price justification to insurers. The objective of this paper is to find suitable categories to identify the diagnostic outpatient medical procedures and translate them from functional orientation to process orientation. A hierarchal task tree is developed based on a classification schema of procedural activities. Each procedure is seen as a process consisting of a number of activities. This makes a powerful foundation for activity‐based cost/management implementation and provides enough information to discover the value‐added and non‐value‐added activities that assist in process improvement and eventually may lead to cost reduction. Work measurement techniques are used to identify the standard time of each activity at the lowest level of the task tree. A real case study at a private hospital is presented to demonstrate the proposed methodology.