1.  Discuss what at a hospital might be managed on a just-in-time basis.

2.  What contingency plans would need to be in place to handle potential supply disruptions? If a pack were missing any items, how might the delay affect the patient and the patient’s family? Should the hospital hold safety stock? If so, should it hold safety stock packs for all types of surgeries or just some types of surgeries?

3.  Finally, what is the cost tradeoff for the implementation?

Answer:

1. A hospital could use JIT - just in time technique for standard or custom required equipment or inventories. Here in the example of palmers hospital they use it for surgical devices and dresses that's needed for a surgery . They have a variation in the contents and order for each of the 45 surgeries they have. Surgeries are scheduled and that gives the hospital and the supplier enough time on hand to get inventory just in time. However this would apply only for scheduled ones and not emergency surgeries.

Also in-patient medicines could be managed by JIT, as and when the patients stock is reducing based on the prescription.

2. Contingency plan should be robust for a health care setup as opposed to a manufacturing unit as the missing part or defective part could cost a life here rather than halting production. Since it's not feasible to have every item in stock , spare items that could cause major delays need to be stocked . Also a check list of all such mishaps needs to be monitored to reduce future defects . Any surgery that requires a particular supply and failure to not have that on time causing harm to a life should be treated as emergency and stock for which needs to be maintained at all costs

3. Cost savings are the inventory costs for detioration, physicians prescribing new medication, storage space and costs etc.