Simulation application for resource allocation in facility management processes in hospitals.

Purpose - The increasing percentage of aging population (longer life expectancy) and the changing financial policies in the healthcare systems put governments under pressure to optimize its healthcare expenditures without compromising quality. One way to cut down the costs is through improving and optimizing the facility management processes. This paper aims to focus on the issues surrounding this. Design/methodology/approach - To demonstrate the application of the research, service management (SM) process which deals with the building services related requests from the customer, one of the facility management (FM) processes, is taken as the focus of this paper. The study applies the lean principles to the SM process to identify the value added and non-value added activities in the process. Process logistics flow is modified to comply with the lean theory. The collected data from six participating hospitals in Germany for the two months of the year 2002 are also used as inputs for the simulation model. Findings - Simulation is used to quantify the impact of the lean principles proposed changes on the system performance. The simulation analysis has proved to be an effective tool in the selection of optimum resources for the SM process in hospitals. The implementation of lean and simulation will assist the facility manager in the selection of the optimum crew size in various sub processes, thus eliminating the trial and error approach. Research limitations/implications - To develop a generic model for all categories of hospitals, substantial data are needed for the simulation model. In this paper, the SM process results from one category of hospitals are presented. Practical implications - The methodology can be extended to the other FM processes in different hospitals, with proper modification. Originality/value - The simulated process model was useful to analyze "what if" scenarios for the decision-making regarding optimum resource allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]