Operations Management Exercise

Simulation Overview

In this single-player asynchronous game, the participants manage several configurations of a hospital Intensive Care Unit (ICU), including multiple specialized units or a larger pooled unit. Variability in arrival times, service times, and resource utilization are configurable, and all impact patient waiting times. The exercise illustrates trade-offs between cost, patient experience, and clinical quality in queuing systems. This exercise includes two configurable scenarios and an assessment quiz built in to the exercise.

Learning Focus

• Understand the relationship between utilization and waiting time in a service organization
• Manage variability in arrival and service times in a service organization
• Identify advantages and disadvantages of using pooled systems vs. specialized systems
• Understand the levers for improving performance of queuing systems

Topics Covered

• Capacity Utilization
• Operations Management
• Queuing

Each simulation comes with a Teaching Guidebook for the facilitator along with 1:1 facilitator training and free trials.

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This simulation is by Anita Tucker, Harvard Business School Publishing, and Forio