Hospital Glove Simulation Ops/Tm 571

Hospital Glove Simulation

The simulation is broken down in four scenarios and provides guidance through the inventory management system of the Elms Valley SurgiCare Center (EVSC). It helps visualize how lot sizes, cycle service level, and safety stock impact inventory cost. The simulation also demonstrates how an accurate demand forecast helps to make the right inventory decisions.

Elms Valley SurgiCare Center (EVSC) is a hospital with capacity of 600 beds and serves nearly one million residents of Elm Valley. The Infection Prevention Committee issued new strict rules for the hospital to follow. The committee was concerned about people allergic to latex protein and mandated that the hospital use non-latex powder-free gloves for surgical purposes and low-latex protein powder-free gloves for examination purposes.

The hospital staff uses the more expensive non-latex surgical gloves whenever they run out of the regular exam gloves; thereby increasing the hospital cost so inventory control has become very critical. The purpose of the simulation is to pretend that the user is the hospital administrator who must forecast the demand of both types of gloves and the best lot sizes for inventory management. The goal is to optimize the cost of inventory while ensuring that the stock does not run out.

Elms Valley SurgiCare’s inventory model is the fixed multi-period inventory system. Scheduling and controlling techniques are used to revise and reorder items every two months. It uses a status report which provides hospital information, gloves specifications, and historical data. The model also provides an inventory report with daily inventory levels for both types of gloves. There are graphs such as the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) graph, the inventory system graph, and the demand vs. quantity graph which make it easier to visualize the effects of changes to demand, reorders, and lot size. Moving the safety stock and demand lines impacts the...