Lessons for providers from a purchaser's perspective

On Jan. 1, 1991, the John Hancock National Transplant Program (JHNTP) became operational, matching kidney, heart, liver, and bone marrow transplant patients from a potential pool comprising more than two million covered lives, with organ transplant programs at 14 institutions across the country. Conceptualizing the program and selecting and contracting with the transplant centers took more than 18 months. This article shares some of the insights from that process that are pertinent to providers of transplant services and to others considering entering this or other forms of specialized contracting.     

A model for reverse logistics entry by third-party providers

Reverse logistics has become an important entity in the US economy. Nonetheless, many companies are not capable of or are unwilling to enter the reverse logistics market. Such reluctance appears to be attributed to lack of knowledge of reverse logistics. This paper reviews current industry practices in reverse logistics. Specifically, we examine the issues and processes that an organization has to address to engage in the reverse logistics business. A reverse logistics decision-making model is developed to guide the process of examining the feasibility of implementing reverse logistics in third-party providers such as transportation companies. The purpose of this model is to help those companies who would like to pursue reverse logistics as a new market. A field study was conducted with a larger US transportation company to validate the proposed model.     

The information revolution: opportunities and pitfalls for patients and providers

The Information Revolution is changing everything in our world. Although this era is developing and evolving, some have described networks, globalization, diffusion of power away from professionals, and information overload as direct results of the Information Revolution. These megatrends are affecting every person and every organization in the world, and this article examines them to see how they might affect medicine and the delivery of health care in the millennium. What is truly significant about the changes brought about by the creation of cyberspace is that through computers, digitized information can be inexpensively and quickly transmitted anywhere in the world. Many of the traditional ethical and professional standards of medicine are feeling the strain of being applied to the strange, unfamiliar world-cyberconsultations and other virtual medical applications are explored. Physicians who understand this revolution will have a far better chance of controlling their destinies--and more importantly, aiding their patients in the quest for good health.     

A new tool for hospital/ physician strategic alignment: the subsidiary physician corporation

Physicians' and hospitals' strategies often diverge--with poor results for both. The causes of this divergence are many. They include different methods of payment, divisive governmental regulations (like Stark) and cultural differences.     

城市交通控制与诱导协调模式的系统分析

交通信号控制系统与车辆路线诱导系统是城市交通流在线管理的两种主要方式. 文章 从控制与诱导的工作原理出发,从控制与诱导的时空特性、实现的目标、完成的功能和输入输 出等多方面,分析了二者进行协调的必要性,论述了二者之间存在的多层次的关联,提出了控 制与诱导之间可能的协调模式,并对决定二者协调模式的相关因素进行了分析.     

Case study in Six Sigma methodology: manufacturing quality improvement and guidance for managers

This article discusses the successful implementation of Six Sigma methodology in a high precision and critical process in the manufacture of automotive products. The Six Sigma define–measure–analyse–improve–control approach resulted in a reduction of tolerance-related problems and improved the first pass yield from 85% to 99.4%. Data were collected on all possible causes and regression analysis, hypothesis testing, Taguchi methods, classification and regression tree, etc. were used to analyse the data and draw conclusions. Implementation of Six Sigma methodology had a significant financial impact on the profitability of the company. An approximate saving of US$70,000 per annum was reported, which is in addition to the customer-facing benefits of improved quality on returns and sales. The project also had the benefit of allowing the company to learn useful messages that will guide future Six Sigma activities.     

控制与诱导的协调中路网拥堵状态识别方法

首先从微观层面上利用谱系聚类法对路口路段的拥堵程度进行分类,在此基础上利用基于节点删除的综合测度法对路口的重要程度进行判别,确定了相应的容量.然后从宏观层面上提出了判断整个路网拥堵程度的状态参量--最大流,并构造了节点和边都有容量约束的多源多汇最大流算法--改进的割集矩阵算法,最后利用算例验证了方法的可行性和有效性.     

Strategies for new product development

Guidelines are offered for following the tortuous trail of new- product development. To succeed, you must first accumulate many likely new-product concepts, rather than just one or two. They all should be subjected to preliminary market research at the same time that they are being investigated for their production feasibility. Feedback-loops must be built in to bridge and reflect results from these simultaneous processes, and the concepts themselves must be allowed to change and undergo a gradual metamorphosis…or they must be allowed to die painlessly at this early stage. Finally, the survivors will achieve commercial success only through the optimism and preseverance of their ‘pilot’.     

A new method for order release

A new method for determining when to release jobs into a probabilistic manufacturing line is described. This new heuristic releases jobs only if their predicted waiting times are sufficiently estimated using simulation. Moreover, we use simulation to examine the performance of this heuristic and others CONWIP, Starvation Avoidance for a manufacturing flow line with exponential machine processing, failure, and repair times. The reasons why it is appropriate to compare order release mechanisms using tradeoff curves of lead time versus customer service are described. The simulation experiments show that the new 'waiting time heuristic' is superior to other order release mechanisms in situations where low lead time is required. small. Waiting times are     

Management paradigms for the new millennium

A proliferation of paradigms is occurring in management thought and practice, defining paradigms as means of understanding the world and a basis for informing action. Frequent paradigm shifts are essential for survival in a business context of constant innovation. While the idea of paradigms has been widely received in management, it has been so more as a contested than a settled domain. Management paradigms are far more numerous than those of the natural sciences that Kuhn studied. Kuhn expected the long periods of normality to be marked by an absence of paradigmatic questioning and strife. In management, at any time, there are a number of competing paradigms available.
Kuhn was concerned to chart how changing realities of investigation were tied up with changing perceptions. In business the focus has been much more on the changing realities rather than changing perspectives. In any system that is ecologically interdependent, if you change any paradigmatic part then you change the whole. When there is sufficient change and fluidity in a system then we can speak of a 'paradigm shift': that period when a shift occurs from one paradigm set to another, the transition from one wave to the next. In these conditions uncertainty and ambiguity will apply. Discontinuous change is a step shift in the rate of change that invalidates existing assumptions and begins to transform the rules of competition.     

A model for new product planning

A model is proposed for long term budget planning of new products. The model makes use of the Project Stage Survival Rate and Project Stage Cost Rate concepts discussed previously in Part I of this paper. published in our August edition.

The methodology utilizes the special attributes of the stages encountered during the R & D process. For this purpose, the project stage is used as a budgeting module. The model is oriented to satisfy the company growth objective by considering a continuous flow of new projects. The process aims at the successful completion of a planned number of projects within given time periods.

A hypothetical application of the model is presented in the form of a Budget Planning Chart.     

Management paradigms for the new millennium

A proliferation of paradigms is occurring in management thought and practice, defining paradigms as means of understanding the world and a basis for informing action. Frequent paradigm shifts are essential for survival in a business context of constant innovation. While the idea of paradigms has been widely received in management, it has been so more as a contested than a settled domain. Management paradigms are far more numerous than those of the natural sciences that Kuhn studied. Kuhn expected the long periods of normality to be marked by an absence of paradigmatic questioning and strife. In management, at any time, there are a number of competing paradigms available. Kuhn was concerned to chart how changing realities of investigation were tied up with changing perceptions. In business the focus has been much more on the changing realities rather than changing perspectives. In any system that is ecologically interdependent, if you change any paradigmatic part then you change the whole. When there is sufficient change and fluidity in a system then we can speak of a ‘paradigm shift’: that period when a shift occurs from one paradigm set to another, the transition from one wave to the next. In these conditions uncertainty and ambiguity will apply. Discontinuous change is a step shift in the rate of change that invalidates existing assumptions and begins to transform the rules of competition.     

Strategies for marketing new computer products

Using the example of the computer industry, this paper explains how the marketing of new ‘high technology’ products can be improved by tailoring the extent and focus of prelaunch marketing planning to the nature and focus of the marketing strategy chosen for the new product.     

Screening new products for potential winners

New product success is predictable. This paper highlights the findings of an extensive study into new product success and failure, and pinpoints what separates winners from losers. The key success factors are: product superiority—delivering unique benefits to customers, upfront homework—before development gets underway, sharp and early product definition, a strong market orientation with constant customer contact and input, and quality of execution of key activities in new product process. Sadly many firms and new product efforts are lacking on these success factors. This points to the need for a more disciplined approach to product development. One solution proposed is the implementation of a stage-gate or formal new product process—a blueprint for the process from idea to launch. A generic stage-gate is outlined in the article. The experiences of managers in firms which have implemented such processes are investigated, and the performance results are positive: improved teamwork, less recycle, higher success rates and shorter cycle times.     

A new MRP/GT lot sizing heuristic: A simulation study

This paper studies the lot-sizing problem in Material Requirements Planning/Group Technology (MRP/GT) systems. A GT production cell is designed to produce many families of components. A major setup is required when switching from manufacturing one family of components to another family, and a minor setup is needed when switching from manufacturing a component type to another component type within the same family. Inventory holding cost is incurred if inventory level is positive, and inventory shortage cost is incurred if inventory level is negative, that is, backordering. The objective of the proposed lot-sizing problem is to minimize the sum of major and minor setup costs, holding and shortage costs, and regular production cost, and to meet simultaneously the demand requirements. The proposed problem is modelled into a linear integer program, a heuristic method to solve the problem is proposed, and a simulation experiment conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed heuristic and some existing heuristics. The computational results show that the proposed heuristic is useful to reduce the total cost significantly over a wide variety of simulated environments.     

A new model for aggregate output planning

Aggregate production planning has been aided in the recent past by the advent of mathematical programming models and the improvement in computer solution techniques. Such models have only considered single objectives; this paper formulates a multi-objective production planning model as a goal program and discusses the problems involved in its implementation.     

Can we plan for new technology?

This paper looks at the contribution of long-range planning to the emergence of the advanced biotechnology industry during the past 5 years and notes differences with planning for semiconductors 20 years ago. Two explanations for the differences are discussed: a steady progress thesis and a long wave thesis. Some conclusions are drawn about biotechnology on one hand and about the nature of planning on the other.