Kaiser Permanente is America’s largest not-for-profit health maintenance organization, serving 8.1 million members in 9 states and the District of Columbia. An integrated health delivery system, Kaiser Permanente organizes and provides or coordinates members’ care, including preventive care such as well-baby and prenatal care, immunizations, and screening diagnostics; hospital and medical services; and pharmacy services.
As a not-for-profit organization, Kaiser is driven by the needs of its members and the social obligation to provide benefit for the communities in which we operate, rather than the needs of shareholders. Social benefit activities include assistance to the uninsured and special populations; training new health professionals; introducing new delivery and financing methods into the health care arena at large; and through Kaiser’s clinical research efforts, developing and sharing better ways to care for patients.
Suzanne Archibald, a Specialist of Kaiser’s Operations Consulting Division, is requested by senior management to review Kaiser’s current operational strategy and important operations management decisions of Kaiser’s operation in some suburban areas, such as Stockton or Tracy in California. Those areas are facing growing population and existing facility and operation strategies may not be sufficient in a near future.
You are approached by Suzanne to help prepare an analysis on Kaiser’s future operations in those changing suburban area. In this report you need to identify and explain the following questions:
- What’s Kaiser’s mission statement to the communities in those areas? (10%)
- Define Kaiser’s operational strategy to reach a sustainable competitive advantage. (10%)
- Develop and explain the 10 OM decisions (i.e., service/product design, quality, process design, location, layout design, HR/job design, supply management, inventory, scheduling, maintenance) to improve Kaiser’s operations in those areas. Figures or tables may be helpful when explain decisions such as layout, supplier, scheduling, or maintenance. (80%)
Assignment Guidelines:
Please provide a title when address each question. In Question 3, need subtitle for each OM decisions when discuss the details of each 10 OM decision. A suggested format (total 3 pages, excluding table, figure, or chart) may be:
- 0.5 page: Describe the proper mission statement of Kaiser Permanente
- 0.5~1 page: Discuss the feasible operations strategies of Kaiser Permanente
- For Question 3, about 1 or 2 paragraphs (with subtitle of each OM decision) on each of the 10 OM decisions (together in 3 pages)
There is no limit on font, font size, or line spacing.
Ten Strategic OM Decisions
- Product and Service Selection and Design
- What product or service should we offer?
- How should we design these products and services?
- Quality Management and Improvement
- What are customer expectations in quality?
- What methods, procedures and policies we need to identify and achieve that quality?
- Process and Capacity Design
- What processes are required and in what order?
- What capacity (equipment, technology, human resources) are necessary for these processes?
- Location Selection
- Where should we build a new facility? Or expand an existing one?
- On what criteria should we base this decision? location
- Layout Design
- How should we arrange the facility in terms of material flows, capacity needs, personnel levels, space and equipment layout, etc.?
- Human Resources and Job Design
- How do we provide a reasonable work environment?
- How much can we expect our employees to produce and how many we need?
- Supply Chain Management
- Should we produce or purchase/outsource items and services?
- Who are our good suppliers and how many should we have?
- How to develop and supply the product on-time?
- Inventory Management
- How much inventory of each item should we have?
- When do we re-order?
- Scheduling
- How many employees do we need to schedule on a daily basis?
- What is the best way to complete a job or project?
- What is the shortest time and lowest cost to accomplish a job?
- Maintenance Management
- Who is responsible for maintenance?
- How to organize, schedule, and control maintenance?
