Scheduling Operations Management - Essay Example

1. What types of scheduling decisions is management likely to encounter in the following operations Describe the scheduling decisions in terms of types of resources to be scheduled and the associated customers or jobs scheduled. a. Hospital The types of resources to be scheduled in a hospital include equipment, labor, and space. A hospital is generally a large organization with many different departments, so the types of equipment, labor, and space will vary by location. Essentially, the hospital will need to have enough staff on hand to take care of all of the patients, enough of the proper equipment to take care of their needs, and enough emergency staff and backup options in place in case emergencies arise.b. University Equipment, labor, and space must also be the resources scheduled for a university.

A university must make sure it has enough instructors to teach all of the classes that have been scheduled, enough regular staff members to address the needs of the students who will be attending, and enough space to house the administration portion of the university as well as to hold all of the scheduled classes (even those with disabled students who need special accommodations). Typically, universities have two main networks of equipment that will need to be properly maintained by an in-house staff: administrative and classroom.

Students will need computers, desks, or other workstations. Staff will need enough of the proper equipment to teach their courses effectively, including computers, projectors, smart boards, and the like.c. Movie Making The types of resources that need to be scheduled for movie making include equipment, labor, and space. The equipment for movie making is various and ranges from cameras all the way to the equipment associated with temporary living accommodations on the filming scene. The labor includes directors, actors, extras, and regular staff members.

The space varies depending on where the movie is being made, but comfortable temporary living accommodations should be assured for all who must stay on the scene.d. Make-to-order-factory A made-to-order factory will also need to schedule the resources of equipment, labor, and space. Enough equipment to handle orders must be available. Labor is special in this case, as it could fluctuate quite a bit. On-call and temporary workers may need to be scheduled in this case. Space needs to be adequate, but not so spread out that time and efficiency is affected.2. Specify the kinds of objectives that might be appropriate for each of the situations listed in Question 1.

For each of the situations above, they should promise a delivery date and stick to it, determine their capacity and not go over it, determine when they should start on each of their tasks and stick to the plan, and make sure the job is completed on time.3. Why is it important to view a batch-process operation as a network of interconntected queues According to the text, "The batch scheduling problem can be thought of as a network of queues. A queue of WIP inventory is formed at each work centers as jobs wait for the facilities to become available.

These queues are interconnected through a network of material or customer flows. The problem of scheduling batch processes is how to manage these queues" (Schroeder, 2008).Reference Schroeder, R. (2008) Operations Management - Contemporary Concepts and Cases, 4th Edition. New York, NY. McGraw-Hill Irwin Publishers.