1. How does Shouldice compete? Identify at least three characteristics of
Shouldice’s operations that contributes to its competitiveness.
Shouldice hospital compete by having limited overhead cost on their activities, for example
they save on marketing by their exemplary service delivery, which makes client do their
advertising for them through word of mouth.
Three characteristics that contributes to Shouldice’s operations competitiveness includes:
1. Its cheap overall maximum cost of $ 1629 to patients (inclusive of four days stay,
surgical fee, assistant surgeon fee, general anaesthetics fee and a max. $600 round trip
fares), compared to other hospitals with costs hovering between $ 2000 - $ 4000.
2. Their recovery rate and their unique operation method.
3. Low operating cost including lack of expenses on advertisement (word of mouth), low
staff turnover due to good interpersonal relationship amongst staff and work balance
and running Hospital on no profit basis.
2. Compute the cycle time (time per patient) and weekly capacity (patients/week) for:
Examination Room, Nurse's Station, Operating Rooms, and Doctors.
Examination Room:
Times per patient = 15 /20 minutes
Available surgery times = 120 Minutes
No of Rooms: 6
Max capacity per room = 120/20 = 6
No of max possible Surgeries per day = (6*6) = 36
Max Weekly capacity = 36*5(no of operation days) = 180
Nurses Station:
Times per patient = 5 to 10 minutes
Availability times = 240 Minutes
No of Nurses stations: 2
Max Daily capacity = 240/10 = 24
Max Weekly capacity = 24*5(no of workdays) = 120
Operating Room:
Times per patient = 45 minutes
No of Rooms: 5
Max Daily capacity = 36
Max Weekly capacity = 36*5(no of workdays) = 180
Doctors:
Times per patient = 20 minutes
Availability times = 240 Minutes
No of Doctors: 11
Max Daily capacity = 11*6 = 66
Max Weekly capacity = 66*5(no of workdays) = 330
3. What was they average throughput advice (patients / week) of Shouldice
hospital?
As mentioned in page 10 of the text, the decline activity for the hospital relates to
145 surgeries per week (sur./week) and they peak of activity to 165. With this, at
average of15th5 sur ./ wee k, which dividing 5 days when surg e manufacturers areperformed
,a
totalof 31 s ur./day could be accounted , in aver age. Howe ver, when calculati ng the
cycles Of surger y, and considering that the hospital only counts with 89 bed s , it is
betterto useto average of 30 see belowr./ day .
4. what is the maximum possible throughput rate of Shouldice hohospital?
According to whas something calculated in point 2, the current capacity of Shouldice
Hospital is15th0 patients. Although , when in cluding surgeriit on S.aturday , this can
increase to 1 80 patient and optimize the usage of the avai lastayds, as shown in
the following ta ble :