QUESTION 1 [30 MARKS]

1.1 There are five generic operational performance objectives: quality, speed, (18) dependability, flexibility and cost. Operations management is responsible for identifying and setting its own performance objectives, which are aligned to the strategic goals of the organisation. Use the following table to list three performance objectives in the operations function. In each case describe (a) what the performance advantage is and (b) why it is important.

Performance objective

What is it?

Why is it important?

1. xx

2. xx

3. xx

1.2 Explain the concept of "operational trade-offs". Give an example from the workplace (12) to demonstrate your understanding.

QUESTION 2 [30 MARKS]

Transforming a pharmacy together: The Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital

Before 2015, the patient experience at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital pharmacy went something like this: take the day off work to have your prescription filled; line up at dawn before the pharmacy opens in hopes of beating the rush; once inside, wait up to several hours for your prescription to be filled; or worse, wait only to experience a false stock out a phenomenon in which a medication appears out of stock but is in fact available in pharmacy storerooms and go home empty-handed.

In September 2014, the Gauteng Department of Health began a province-wide project to provide pharmacy customers with more professional and efficient visits. The department wanted to prove that it could offer better service wherever needed, and the troublesome situation at the Charlotte Maxeke pharmacy made it an excellent place to make its case.

McKinsey began by working with managers to narrow their focus to improving the physical environment, prescription-filling process, and stock management, the main factor behind lengthy waiting times. To kick off the project, McKinsey focused on making the physical premises more welcoming and attractive to patients and staff. One Saturday, Department of Health officials, including a member of the executive council, the pharmacy manager and CEO of the hospital, infrastructure-department representatives, and McKinsey consultants, all pitched in for a day-long cleaning.

The idea was to show staff how committed leadership was to turning around the pharmacy. The volunteers painted and decorated walls; added amenities like water coolers, TVs, and coffee machines in the waiting room; and supplied pharmacists with monogrammed lab coats. Patients and staff immediately appreciated the more cheerful and professional atmosphere.

McKinsey experts then turned to improving the process of prescription filling. A consulting team mapped the existing process and studied each step to identify bottlenecks and areas of wasted activity. They then devised a streamlined approach using three principles of lean production. The first was called first time right and aimed to stop invalid prescriptions from entering the filling process. A senior pharmacist became the first point of contact for each patient. The pharmacist would filter out patients whose prescriptions were invalid (because they were not yet due for refills) or could not be filled because of stock shortages. Second, they removed the batch system, which meant prescriptions were no longer dispensed in batches of ten, but were made available to be dispensed as soon as each one was ready.

Finally, the team introduced a demand-pull system, which enabled staff actually to dispense these prescriptions to patients in a timely fashion. The existing process began with taking in scripts as fast as possible, and then filling them. The result was a huge build-up of filled scripts that were waiting to be labelled and dispensed to patients (in other words, a push approach). The McKinsey team shifted the focus to the end of the process dispensing and ensuring that there was sufficient staff to distribute prepared scripts, thus pulling prescriptions through the process more efficiently.

The consultants also revised each staff members role in the process and adjusted the layout of the pharmacy to make it more orderly. This included outfitting each workstation with laminated posters that displayed the new process rules. They also designed management tools for example, a daily roster with role allocation and a performance dashboard that the pharmacy manager was then responsible for implementing.

Under the new system, pharmacy staff rotated between duties to ensure that there was no build-up of scripts. This required knowing how many people to assign to each stage of the process and shifting staff when someone was absent, at lunch, or when there was a backlog. The McKinsey team initially oversaw these shifts, but then coached the pharmacy staff on identifying and resolving bottlenecks quickly, with the senior pharmacist on the floor ultimately responsible for managing the workflow.

Behind the counter, these reforms yielded a better working experience and higher morale. For patients, it meant a significant decrease in wait time. Average wait time fell by 24 minutes for long prescriptions (more than four items), from 74 to 50 minutes. For shorter prescriptions (four items or less), waiting time was reduced from 30 to less than 5 minutes, with 33 percent of patients served in less than 3 minutes. False stock-outs were eliminated and the wait time for to take out patients dropped from six to two hours.

(McKinsey, 2020)

2.1 Using the information provided from the McKinsey case study, and your own (10) knowledge of policies and procedures, analyse the initial challenges faced by

Charlotte Maxeke Hospitals pharmacy department.

2.2 Discuss why it is important to include the inputs, the transformation processes, and (10) outputs when analysing a problem.

2.3 What alternative courses of action would you recommend given your knowledge of (10) process technology? Justify your responses with external sources.

QUESTION 3 [20 MARKS]

Discuss corporate social responsibility, ethics and green issues in operations management in your organisation, up to a maximum of five issues. Include environmental issues and social factors, and how these affect operational decision-making.

QUESTION 4 [10 MARKS]

Explain what sensitivity analysis can tell us, and why it is an important decision tool for operations managers.

QUESTION 5 [10 MARKS]

5.1 A mattress factory operates five days a week from 8:30 to 16:30 with a 30 minutes (5) break for lunch. Ninety mattresses must be produced in a week. What is the Takt

time for the factory?

5.2 A furniture factory works five days a week with three shifts a day. Every shift is (5) approximately 420 minutes long, with a 60 minute break for lunch. The factory has

been awarded a tender that must be completed in 13 weeks, to make 629 cupboards. Calculate the takt time in the period.

ASSIGNMENT QUESTIONS QUESTION 1 [30 MARKS) (18) 1.1 There are five generic operational performance objectives: quality, speed, dependability. flexibility and cost. Operations management is responsible for identifying and setting its own performance objectives, which are aligned to the strategic goals of the organisation. Use the following table to list three performance objectives in the operations function. In each case describe (a) what the performance advantage is and (b) why it is important What is it? Why is it important? Performance objective 1. xx 2. xx 3. xx 1.2 Explain the concept of "operational trade-offs". Give an example from the workplace (12) to demonstrate your understanding PDBM_OPS_ASG_2020 Regenesys Business School 4 QUESTION 2 (30 MARKS] Transforming a pharmacy together: The Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital Before 2015, the patient experience at the Charlotte Maneke Johannesburg Academic Hospital pharmacy went something like this: take the day of work to have your prescription filed line up at dawn before the pharmacy opens in hopes of beating the rush, once inside, wait up to several hours for your prescription to be filed or worse, wait only to experience a "false stock out' - a phenomenon in which a medication appears out of stock but is in fact available in pharmacy storerooms - and go home empty-handed In September 2014, the Gauteng Department of Health began a province-wide project to provide pharmacy customers with more professional and efficient visits. The department wanted to prove that it could offer better service wherever needed, and the troublesome situation at the Charlotte Maveke pharmacy made it an excellent place to make its case. McKinsey began by working with managers to narrow their focus to improving the physical environment, prescription-filing process, and stock management, the main factor behind lengthy waiting times. To kick off the project, McKinsey focused on making the physical premises more welcoming and atractive to patients and staff. One Saturday, Department of Health officials, including a member of the executive Council, the pharmacy manager and CEO of the hospital infrastructure-department representatives, and McKinsey consultants, all pitched in for a day-long cleaning The idea was to show staff how committed leadership was to turning around the pharmacy. The volunteers painted and decorated walls, added amenities like water coolers, TVs, and coffee machines in the waiting room, and supplied pharmacists with monogrammed lab coats. Patients and staff immediately appreciated the more cheerful and professional atmosphere. McKinsey experts then turned to improving the process of prescription filing. A consulting team mapped the existing process and studied each step to identify bottlenecks and areas of wasted activity. They then devised a streamlined approach using three principles of lean production. The first was called "fest time right and aimed to stop invalid prescriptions from entering the filling process. A senior pharmacist became the first point of contact for each patient. The pharmacist would filter out patients whose prescriptions were invalid (because they were not yet due for refils) or could not be filled because of stock shortages. Second, they removed the batch system, which meant prescriptions were no longer dispensed in batches of ten, but were made available to be dispensed as soon as each one was ready Finally, the team introduced a demand-pull system, which enabled staff actually to dispense these prescriptions to patients in a timely fashion. The existing process began with taking in scripts as fast as possible, and then filling them The result was a huge build-up of filled scripts that were wating to be labelled and dispensed to patients (in other words, a "push" approach). The McKinsey team shifted the focus to the end of the process - dispensing - and ensuring that there was sufficient staff to distribute prepared scripts, thus "puling' prescriptions through the process more efficiently. The consultants also revised each staff member's role in the process and adjusted the layout of the pharmacy to make it more orderly. This included outfitting each workstation with laminated posters that displayed the new process rules. They also designed management tools-for example, a daily roster with role alocation and a performance dashboard - that the pharmacy manager was then responsible for implementing. PDBM_OPS_ASG_2020 Regenesys Business School 5 Gof Under the new system, pharmacy staff rotated between duties to ensure that there was no build-up of scripts. This required knowing how many people to assign to each stage of the process and shifting staff when someone was absent. at lunch or when there was a backlog. The McKinsey team initially oversaw these shifts, but then coached the pharmacy staff on identifying and resolving bottlenecks quickly, with the senior pharmacist on the floor ultimately responsible for managing the workflow Behind the counter, these reforms yielded a better working experience and higher morale. For patients, it meant a significant decrease in wait time. Average wat time fell by 24 minutes for long prescriptions (more than four items), from 74 to 50 minutes. For shorter prescriptions (four tems or less), waiting time was reduced from 30 to less than 5 minutes, with 33 percent of patients served in less than 3 minutes. False stock-outs were eliminated and the wait time for to take out patients dropped from six to two hours. (McKinsey, 2020) (10) 2.1 Using the information provided from the McKinsey case study, and your own knowledge of policies and procedures, analyse the initial challenges faced by Charlotte Maxeke Hospital's pharmacy department 2.2 Discuss why it is important to include the inputs, the transformation processes, and outputs when analysing a problem. (10) 23 What alternative courses of action would you recommend given your knowledge of (10) process technology? Justify your responses with external sources. QUESTION 3 [20 MARKS] Discuss corporate social responsibility, ethics and green issues in operations management in your organisation, up to a maximum of five issues. Include environmental issues and social factors, and how these affect operational decision-making. PDBM_OPS_ASG_2020 Regenesys Business School QUESTION 4 [10 MARKS] Explain what sensitivity analysis can tell us, and why it is an important decision tool for operations managers. QUESTIONS [10 MARKS] (5) 5.1 A mattress factory operates five days a week from 8:30 to 16:30 with a 30 minutes break for lunch. Ninety mattresses must be produced in a week. What is the Takt time for the factory? (5) 5.2 A furniture factory works five days a week with three shifts a day. Every shift is approximately 420 minutes long, with a 60 minute break for lunch. The factory has been awarded a tender that must be completed in 13 weeks, to make 629 cupboards. Calculate the takt time in the period. Total Marks: 100 PDBM_OPS_ASG_2020 Regenesys Business School 7