Refers to the practice of processing several units together to take advantage of economies of scale. In the context of hospitals, the surgeons’ preferences for long theater sessions with several surgeries scheduled in one session is an example of batching that is motivated by the time and effort involved in the surgeons’ visits to the hospital.
Published in Chapter:
Prevalence of Bullwhip Effect in Hospitals
Kannan Sethuraman (Melbourne Business School, Australia) and Devanath Tirupati (Indian Institute of Management, India)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 8
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-889-5.ch135
Abstract
Lee, et al. (1997b) state the impact of increased volatility as, “Distorted information from one end of the supply chain to the other can lead to excessive inventory investment, poor customer service, lost revenues, ineffective transportation, and missed production schedules.” Although there is a growing body of research on managing the bullwhip effect in manufacturingbased supply chains (Baganha & Cohen, 1998; Chen, Drezner, Ryan & Simchi-Levi, 2000; Chen, Ryan & Simchi-Levi, 1997; Metter, 1997), little research exists on its presence in service chains, and we are unaware of any reported research on this subject. In this chapter, we present several examples of distorted information in hospitals resulting in variability amplification and causing inefficiencies similar to the bullwhip effect. We highlight the underlying causes for this phenomenon and propose actions that can mitigate the detrimental impact of this distortion.