Kampan Mukherjee

Performance measurement system for healthcare processes

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to provide an overview and evaluation of performance measurement systems and also present a framework for the selection of an appropriate performance measurement system for healthcare processes.Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a brief review of the existing performance measurement frameworks. On the basis of review, performance measurement system criteria are identified and accordingly a framework has been proposed for measuring performance in healthcare processes.Findings – The measurement of performance of a healthcare organization is still an unresolved issue. A performance measurement system should be sensitive to changes in the external and internal environment of an organization. The proposed framework measures performance from a multi and interrelated perspective, namely efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility.Practical implications – The study will help the healthcare organization to know how they are performing; it will also help in bench...

Application of goal programming in project selection decision — A case study from the Indian coal mining industry

Abstract This paper includes the solution of a project selection decision applying goal programming technique. A case example from the Indian coal mining industry has been taken up and discussed. A framework is introduced incorporating ratings from experts for computation of goal weights and also normalisation of deviational variables. Stochasticity of demand is included in model formulation.

Decision support for spare parts acquisition in post product life cycle

A major task in service management is the timely and cost efficient provision of spare parts for durable products. This especially holds good, when the regular production of the product, its components and parts has been discontinued, but customer service still has to be guaranteed for quite a long time. In such post product life cycle period, three options are available to organize the spare parts acquisition, namely (i) setting up a single large order within the final lot of regular production, (ii) performing extra production runs until the end of service and (iii) using remanufacturing to gain spare parts from used products. These three options are characterized by different cost and flexibility properties. Due to the time-variability and uncertainty of demands for spare parts and also that of the returns of used products, it is a challenging task to find out the optimal combination of these three options. In this paper we show how this problem can be modeled and solved by Decision Tree and stochastic Dynamic Programming procedure. Based on the Dynamic Programming approach a heuristic method is proposed, which can be employed to come up with a simple solution procedure for real-world spare parts acquisition problems during the post product life cycle. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the application of the solution methods described in the paper.

Analysis of issues relating to remanufacturing technology - a case of an Indian company

Remanufacturing is an attractive business option involving the process of value recovery and reuse of used products. Even though it has been accepted by the Western world, India is yet to take it up as an organised industrial sector. An attempt is made to study the various techno-managerial activities of an Indian photocopier remanufacturer. This paper includes critical examination of relevant issues in managing the remanufacturing process with the help of Interpretive Structural Model (ISM) methodology and discussion on the case study subsequently leads to some meaningful conclusions. It is found that the key drivers for this remanufacturing business are the issues relating to users environment (source of returns) and marketing of remanufactured products. There seems to exist two most important factors, which are activating all other managerial issues. Interestingly, product design issues do not activate other issues, which may be explained by the fact that the company itself is managing remanufacturing of its own products. However, experience shows that in most of the reported cases of remanufacturing, factors related to product design play very important role and trigger activation of other issues.

Buy-back policy decision in managing reverse logistics

In acquisition planning of Product Recovery Management, the decision maker intends to find out the optimal buy-back period of a used product minimising the economic benefit from remanufacturing. For certain products, which are under a free servicing policy by the company, the acquisition planning is controlled by two indices, one defined by the service management of the company and the other, defined by the working environment at the users end. In this paper we tried to study this hypothesis and establish the expression of these indices in terms of various economic parameters relating to the remanufacturing process.

Development of an AHP-QFD framework for designing a tourism product

A tourism product, characterised by its non-amenability to uniform product specifications, is considered to be an amalgam of different tangible and intangible elements. Keeping in view the heterogeneity, perishability and the uniqueness involved in a tourism product, the present study attempts to develop an AHP-QFD framework for designing a tourism product, which takes care of the touristic needs of tourists. The framework has been demonstrated with the help of an illustrative case study. Having identified the needs of tourists with reference to a tourist destination, the needs are prioritised with the help of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Subsequently, the concept of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is employed to formulate operating strategies by eliciting opinions from tourism professionals. Pairwise relationships among the operating strategies are investigated to find out whether the strategies support each other or are in conflict with each other. Finally the strategies are prioritised and evaluated, which enables the design of a tourism product incorporating the diverse needs of tourists.

Application of an interactive method for MOILP in project selection decision: a case from an Indian coal mining industry

Abstract In this paper an attempt is made to develop a methodology for project selection in an Indian coal mining company. The methodology involves the formulation of the project selection problem as a multiple criteria integer linear program and its solution by an interactive method. A case example problem is studied and solved using the proposed methodology.

An empirical investigation on the feasibility of remanufacturing activities in the Indian economy

In this paper, an empirical study is carried out to explore the reasons behind the unpopularity of remanufacturing business in India. The critical issues relevant to remanufacturing are studied. This reveals the contribution of the key factors which somewhat determine the non-acceptance of remanufacturing as a business activity in India. Subsequently, the analysis leads to formation of classes of sectors as per the role of the above factors.

A QFD Approach to Addressing the Impacts of Tourism Development

ABSTRACT The present study attempts to assess how far tourism development in a host region results in both positive as well as negative impacts. A series of paired t-tests are carried out between the expectation of the host community on tourism impacts and their experience with the same, which reveal that the host community expectation is remaining unfulfilled on all eight positive impacts. Results of t-tests pertaining to eight negative impacts further indicate that the experience of the host community with two negative impacts is significantly poor compared to their expectations. Subsequently with a view to addressing these unfulfilled positive impacts and significant negative impacts, a number of strategies are formulated by eliciting opinions from tourism professionals employing the concept of Quality Function Deployment (QFD). Pair-wise relationships among the strategies are investigated to find out whether the strategies support each other or are in conflict with each other. Finally the strategies are prioritized and evaluated, which provides valuable insights to the tourism planners for effectively addressing tourism impacts in the host region.

Selection decisions of offshore ITO service providers for strategic alliances - an AHP-based approach

Increasing trends towards offshore business model for IT service delivery motivates client organisations looking for offshore partners, who have the ability to match their strategic business requirements. One of the critical steps in this endeavour is the selection of an offshore supplier among many potential alternatives. Therefore, the offshore supplier selection decision has emerged as an important aspect of strategic alliance formation. Given the multi-criteria nature of the offshore supplier selection decision, this article proposed a comprehensive problem definition hierarchy highlighting the key elements criteria at its various levels based on a thorough study and analysis of the existing literature on IT outsourcing ITO industry. A data collection instrument is designed to capture comparative judgements from Indian practitioners on relative importance of each element in the hierarchy. Analytic hierarchy process AHP is applied to synthesise the captured data to get the normalised weights of these criteria. Lowest level criteria are eventually used to rank three suppliers to test the veracity of the proposed hierarchy. At the end a sensitivity analysis is conducted to verify the stability of the outcome.