Answer question 2&3 fully with explanation I didn’t get it in the previous quest
ID: 388695 • Letter: A
Question
Answer question 2&3 fully with explanation I didn’t get it in the previous question Case 1: Creature Care Animal Clinic-10 marks It has been three years since Dr. Julia Barr opened Creature Care Animal Clinic, a suburban veterinary clinic. Dr. Barr thought that by now she would be enjoying having her own practice. She had spent many years in college and worked to save money in order to start a business. Instead, she felt overwhelmed with business problems that were facing the clinic. She t herself: "I don't produce anything. I just provide a service doing hought to Company Background Dr. Barr opened Creature Care Animal Clinic as a veterinary clinic specializing in the care of dogs and cats. The clinic was set to operate Monday through Friday during regular business hours, with half days on Saturday and extended hours on Wednesday evening. full-time veterinarian, Dr. Gene Yen, a staff of three nurses, an office manager, and an office work during the week and rotate the shif for Wednesday evenings and Saturdays. A similar schedule was set up for the nurses. The office manager worked during regular business hours, and the assistant worked on Wednesday evenings and Saturdays. Dr. Barr set up this schedule based on a clinic she had observed as a resident and thought it sounded reasonable. Since the clinic was smal, Dr. Barr did not have a formal system of inventory management. All physicians and nurses were allowed to place purchase orders based on need. Initially this system worked wel but after a few months problems started developing. Frequently, there was excess inventory of certain items, and in many cases there were multiple brands of the same product. Sometimes medications passed their expiration dates and had to be thrown away. At the same time, the clinic often unexpectedly ran out of stock of certain supplies and rush orders had to be placed. On one occasion, the clinic ran so low on bandages that the assistant had to be sent to the local drugstore. Dr. Barr continued to rotate with Dr. Yen for coverage on Saturdays and Wednesday evenings. However, demand was increasing so rapidly on Saturdays that one doctor was not enough to provide needed coverage. Also, the Friday afternoon schedule was usually so packed that the staff frequently had to stay late in the evening. At the same time, there was little demand on Wednesday evenings and Dr. Barr found herself working on paperwork on those evenings, while the nurse and office assistant performed menial office tasks. Dr. Barr hired another assistant. Both doctors were to
Explanation / Answer
2. In order to identify the potential reasons why the Dr. Barr is facing the problems, we need to first identify the problems itself. Given the case, the problems that Dr. Barr is facing are
Now if we look at this the root cause is provided within the case. The case mentions that “Since the clinic was small, Dr. Barr did not have a formal system of inventory management”. This is where the problem for the inventory management lies. Since there is no formal system and procedure to acquire, manage and use inventory, the problems for the inventory can be attributed to the lack of a formal system. This is why anyone can order for inventory (this causes duplicate products or excess inventory), there is no safety stock (causes shortage of inventory), and no inventory categorization system (causes products to expire). In a nutshell, the problem is that there is no formal inventory management system.
Similarly the case also mentions that “Dr. Barr set up the schedule based on a clinic she had observed as a resident and thought it sounded reasonable”. This is where the scheduling problem lies with their manpower and labor planning. While this may be a good point to start, we can see that the demand for the service varies along the week. There is low demand on Wednesdays and high demand on Fridays and Saturdays. Thus it does not make sense keeping evening shift on Wednesday. Thus, Dr. Barr was right in starting with a familiar schedule but needs to record the demand and forecast the same using the seasonality factor (daily level) and linear trend (growth). Once this forecast is prepared she needs to modify the shift schedule to match the demand. Clearly this has not been done and is the reason why the shift schedule system doesn’t seem to work.
3. The reasons why clinic is having inventory problem is because of the lack of formal inventory management system. If we break it down,