Health visitors revisited

Cambridgeshire Area Health Authority commissioned a team from the University of Aston Management Centre to carry out an operational research project in order to assist in planning the provision of health visitor services in Peterborough health District. Since Peterborough is a Development Area there has been a rapid increase in population which it is planned will continue for some years. This change in size and age-distribution of the population poses considerable problems for planning the provision of health visitor services.Health visitors are trained nurses who have highly independent roles in the National Health Service. They are largely concerned with preventive work, traditionally with children and increasingly with the elderly, in which it is difficult to set quantitative objectives and measure outputs.This paper will describe the research plan and the models developed. Considerable attention will be paid to the relationship of the research team to the client system, consisting of the Area and District managers and the individual health visitors. The implications of this type of study in extending the practice of O.R. will be considered.     

Planning midwifery services to deliver continuity of care

This paper describes a simulation model of maternity services which was developed to support the planning of midwifery services to meet demands for continuity of care. A Government report of maternity services in 1992 emphasised the need to replace the fragmented care offered to pregnant women by a more personalised type of approach. One way of doing this is by the implementation of team midwifery in which care is provided, antenatally, during labour, and then postnatally by either the same midwife or, more usually a small team of midwives.The model described in this paper attempts to assess the effects of team size upon the continuity of care provided to pregnant women under different implementations. Continuity is measured in terms of the percentage of occasions a team midwife will be available to meet the health care demands of pregnant women. The model may be used not only for the evaluation of services already in use, but also for the planning of alternative and better services.     

Managing Cost Overrun Risk in Project Funding Allocation

This paper discusses decision making of project funding allocation under uncertain project costs. Because project costs are uncertain and funding allocations may not necessarily match the costs required, each project is inherently subject to a cost overrun risk (COR). In this paper, a model is proposed in which project cost is treated as a factor with a probability density function. The decision maker then allocates the total funding to the projects while minimizing a weighted sum of mean and variance of the COR of the project portfolio. Some properties of project COR are derived and interpreted. Optimal funding allocation, in relationship to factors such as various project sizes and riskiness, project interdependency, and the decision maker’s risk preference, is analyzed. The proposed funding allocation model can be integrated with project selection decision-making and provides a basis for more effective project control.     

Designing a recovery-orientated system of care: A community operational research perspective

Theory suggests health focused Community Operational Research (COR) projects and their participants can benefit from balancing a “glass half empty” concern for deficits, problems and weaknesses with a “glass half full” concern for identifying health assets and bringing them into use. We present a COR systemic intervention in the care of persons with addiction and substance use/ misuse problems in Clydeplace, Scotland (anonymised). Our research reveals how the Whole Person Recovery System is situated within a wider General Community Recovery System that offers a variety of health assets that can be mobilised to create and increase recovery capital. The project involved 20 semi-structured interviews, two asset mapping workshops, a certificated “health issues” course completed by seven “champions”, and action planning and implementation. In the interviews participants found gaps were more easily identified than assets. During the workshops participants identified 388 discrete assets and gaps, prioritised these using a simple voting system and developed a series of actions to mobilise health assets including bringing into use local facilities and amenities and involving a number of individuals and groups in local events and activities. Our study suggests that even in the impoverished system of Clydeplace, a “Community Catalyst” in the form of a Community Operational Researcher can act to stimulate the co-development of health assets, build relationships and enable the creation of social capital. It is not clear though when such systems become “self-catalysing.”     

Choosing the Operational Research Programme for B.I.S.R.A

This paper examines some important problems in the evaluation and selection of research projects, with particular reference to operational research projects in a central industry research organization. A method for project evaluation is suggested which provides data suitable for use in a powerful and flexible formal procedure for project selection. In evaluating a project, the assessment of resource requirements is based on a probabilistic network plan of the project, and the estimates of benefits are derived from the marginal effects on the industry of performing or not performing the project, using discounted cash flow techniques. The procedure for project selection chooses not only the projects to be undertaken, but also the team sizes that should be used. A wide variety of constraints can be imposed on the system to reflect different aspects of management policy or other special factors. The procedures described have been implemented, and have proved well worth while.     

Iterative algorithms for the curfew planning problem

The curfew planning problem is to design an annual timetable for railway track maintenance teams. Each team is capable of handling certain types of repairs and replacement jobs. The jobs are combined into a set of projects according to their locations and types. The timetable shows which project should be worked on by each team on a weekly basis throughout an entire year. Our objective is to design a schedule with minimum network disruption due to ongoing maintenance projects that require absolute curfew. Absolute curfew projects are those that cause complete closure of the rail traffic. For tackling this problem, we develop four optimization-based iterative algorithms. We also present very promising computational results obtained within a few minutes using data provided by a major North American railroad.     

The Development of a Decision-support System for Planning Services within Hospitals

The planning of services within district health authorities is a complex task, but the process of planning is often crude: few options for addressing issues are considered, and these are inadequately assessed. These deficiencies led to research of which the aim was to identify the types of information and systems needed for improved planning. This paper describes the product of that research, the Hospital Planning Model. It is a decision-support system which gives planners fast access to relevant information for planning hospital services. This allows them to consider quickly a range of options for addressing a particular planning issue, and to test how sensitive the implications of proposals are to differing planning assumptions. The system has been shown to be generalizable, and is currently used in 28 health districts and other health organizations throughout the United Kingdom. The proposed reforms of the NHS are likely to increase the relevance of the system: the purchaser/provider market will result in a greater awareness by hospitals of the importance of identifying measures to improve the cost-effectiveness of care. Purchasers too may want to scrutinize hospitals in terms of their efficiency.     

A discrete event simulation model in the case of managing a software project

The design and development of large-scale software projects is a complex endeavor, often facing problems like cost and schedule overruns as well as low quality. Over the last years the management of software development projects has been recognized as the cornerstone point of seeking improvement and solutions. Simulation modeling of the software project process is gaining interest among academics and practitioners, as a method to tackle the complex questions with which relevant enterprises are confronted. It offers support on several issues, such as defining software product development strategies, decision-making regarding process improvement and training, in a time span ranging from a short portion of the life cycle to long term product evolution, with organization-wide implications. The aim of this work is to implement a model simulating a core part of a software project process, enabling the estimation of several project development details such as delivery times and quality metrics. The purpose of the model is to assist project managers in control and monitoring, but also in identifying the best planning alternatives. The model scope covers a portion of the life cycle of an incremental software development venture.     

A comparative analysis of learning curves: Implications for new technology implementation management

New technology implementation projects are notoriously over time and budget resulting in significant financial and strategic organizational consequences. Some argue that inadequate planning and management, misspecification of requirements, team capabilities and learning contribute to cost and schedule over runs. In this paper we examine how learning curve theory could inform better management of new technology implementation projects. Our research makes four important contributions: (1) It presents a comparative analysis of learning curves and proposes how they can be used to help ERP implementation planning and management. (2) Based on empirical data from four ERP implementation projects, it provides illustrations of how managers can apply the curves in different project situations. (3) It provides a theoretical basis for empirical studies of learning and ERP (and other IT) implementations in different organizational settings. (4) It provides empirical justification for the development of learning curve theory in IT implementation.     

Incentive schemes for resolving Parkinson’s Law in project management

Project management is a business process that supports about 30% of the world’s economic activity. Yet projects routinely suffer from the influence of Parkinson’s Law. This behavioural phenomenon routinely results in failure to deliver work that is completed early before its assigned deadline. As a consequence, the late completion of other work is not offset, and overall project performance suffers. Hence, project success rates below 40% are widely reported.Our work uses mechanism design within non-cooperative game theory. A particular issue in the design process is to eliminate the possibility that a project worker with multiple dependent tasks can improve their incentive payment by falsely reporting some of their task completion times. From our review of the academic and business literature of project management, no incentive scheme used in practice accomplishes this.Our results include the design of incentive schemes that eliminate or mitigate Parkinson’s Law. These schemes apply to projects designed under either traditional Critical Path Method (CPM) planning or modern Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) planning, and are also invulnerable to group strategy. A large-scale computational study validates the resulting benefit to project performance as substantial and also robust across different project characteristics. We also provide what is apparently the first analytical comparison between traditional CPM and modern CCPM planning systems.The incentive schemes we propose are simple and easily implementable. We recognize that performance incentives are structured differently by each organization, but our work provides a flexible basis from which various practical schemes can be designed.     

基于可拓方法的虚拟项目团队构架

虚拟项目团队是网络经济条件下产生的一种新的团队组织形式,目前,许多知识型项目团队的构架均采用这种方式.利用可拓工程方法完成了虚拟项目团队从任务确定、职责分工、人员甄选,直到项目团队构架的整个过程.方法的运用,为虚拟项目团队的进一步研究提供了一种新的思维方式和研究方法.     

Uncertainty Modelling in Software Development Projects (With Case Study)

A project scheduling model tailored specifically for software development projects is proposed in this study. The model incorporates uncertainties related to activity durations and network topology. The first type of uncertainty exists due to error-prone coding which might result in elongated task durations caused by validation and debugging sessions. Furthermore, in practice, macro-activities represent groups of sub-tasks in order to simplify the planning and monitoring of the project. Due to the aggregation, it is more difficult to be precise on the duration of a macro-activity.The uncertainty related to the network topology is due to common database design issues or program modules shared among parallel tasks in the project network. These tasks become associated with each other through uncertain Start-to-Start (SS) precedence relationships. On the other hand, SS lags may also be the outcome of technological precedence relationships among pairs of activities. However, the imprecision underlying the work content of a predecessor activity leads to uncertain SS lags.Software development projects are human-intensive projects and hence, the duration of a task depends on the skill of the person assigned to the job as well as his/her learning rate. Thus, a task may be realized by alternative staff members which results in different expected task durations. Hence, a realistic model proposed for software development projects should incorporate staff assignment features under the uncertainties discussed above. In this study, we develop a mathematical model for software development projects and propose heuristic solution methods to be used by the project co-ordinator in preparing the project plan. The heuristic algorithms developed here are tested on real data provided by a consulting firm undertaking software development projects from manufacturing companies in Turkey.     

The Nature of Community OR

This paper outlines the results of a study undertaken to investigate the nature of Community Operational Research (COR). The objective was to contact the people involved in COR through a series of personal interviews and a questionnaire survey, in order to clarify many of the issues that have emerged within the profession relating to the practice of OR within the community and voluntary sector. A total of 20 individuals were successfully contacted, and they have been responsible for at least two-thirds of the projects in the COR area.     

Examining the feasibility of using a modelling tool to assess resilience across a health-care system and assist with decisions concerning service reconfiguration

Changes in medical practice, demographic shifts and financial pressures are all examples of factors that may contribute to demand for periodic changes in the configuration of health services. When reconfiguring a service, health planners often take into account projected demand for services, patient access criteria and budgetary constraints (among other things), but typically give little consideration regarding its resilience to deliver services during and after external disruptions to its capability to deliver. In this paper we discuss a study conducted in response to a direct request from the National Health Service (NHS) Resilience Project within the Department of Health to explore the feasibility of assessing resilience across local services within the NHS and developing a computer software tool to assess resilience of different service reconfigurations. We give an account of the modelling process used, including the analytical framework we developed using both optimisation and heuristic methods, and an illustrative example of usage of a prototype software tool. We also highlight the key lessons that emerged during this project, which may be helpful to OR analysts working on similar projects regarding resilience in the public sector.     

Decision support approach based on multiple objectives and resources for assessing the relocation plan of dangerous hillside aggregations

The overdevelopment of hillside areas, coupled with the effects of global climate change, has increased the likelihood of disasters with severe consequences, such as material damages and loss of lives. Thus, there is a great urgency to create relocation plans for dangerous hillside aggregations that are not suitable for human settlement. The government of Taipei City in Taiwan has not properly addressed the assessment needs for decisions involving priority and budget allocation for these relocation projects. This study proposes a hybrid approach combining the Delphi method, fuzzy-logic inference system (FLIS), and the multi-objective programming (MOP) method to assist the city government in dealing with complex aggregation relocation decision problems. Twenty-four projects are tested by the proposed approach. Compared to the original relocation plan, results from this study reveal that the proposed approach is more objective and effective in relocation prioritization, project selection, budget utilization, and resource planning. These results will provide the city government with useful information for improving the relocation plan, thereby reducing the potential for human and material losses due to inadequate decision-making.     

Operational research in health services planning

Some of the characteristics which distinguish social planning from planning in the private sector, or in publicly owned industry, are identified. A survey of OR investigations (both tactical and strategic) in the area of health services planning supports the case that the mainstream OR contribution does violence to the nature of the system under study. In particular, problems are formulated in terms of (or transformed into) single objectives, to be optimized; aspects of the social world are subject to wholesale quantification, with resulting distortion; models make implausible data demands; project definition and execution reinforce the ‘scientisation’ of political debate; problems are formulated on the assumption of a single hierarchically powerful decision-maker; and problems are formulated as if they must be solved in toto at one point in time. It is suggested that we should look to the converse of these qualities for new directions in the application of operational research in social planning. Some examples are given of techniques and approaches, drawn both from within health services planning and from other areas, which exhibit these alternative characteristics.     

Some Optimization Problems in Advertising Media Planning

This is an account of the first stage of a multi-stage research programme in the planning of advertising media schedules. The problems of securing maximum impact and maximum coverage in an intense campaign of short duration for a fixed outlay are discussed. A precise solution of the Impact problem and an approximate solution of the Coverage problem are outlined. These solutions are currently being used, but test results are not yet available. This is, therefore, an interim statement and not a completed case history.     

A bi-objective hierarchical program scheduling problem and its solution based on NSGA-III

In enterprise project management systems, a program at the tactical level coordinates and manages multiple projects at the operational level. There are close relationships between multiple projects in a program, which are typically manifested as shared resources and precedence relationships. Most research efforts have concentrated on the resource sharing by projects, while the precedence relationships between projects have yet to be comprehensively investigated. In this paper, a bi-objective hierarchical resource-constrained program scheduling problem proposed, where both resource sharing and precedence relationships between projects are considered in a distributed environment. The problem contains two different sub-problems at the operational level and the tactical level, and they are modeled in the same way as two bi-objective multi-mode scheduling problems. Shared resources are allocated from the tactical level to the operational level, and once they are allocated to a project, they can only be re-allocated to other projects once the current project is finished. Subsequently, a two-phase algorithm based on NSGA-III is developed. The algorithm runs at the operational level and the tactical level in turn. According to the Pareto fronts of projects that are submitted from the operational level, the bi-objective program planning at the tactical level is conducted under the constraints of precedence relationships and shared resources. The results of computational simulations demonstrate the satisfactory performance of the improved algorithm. By coordinating the local optimization of projects and the global optimization of the program in a hierarchical framework, the method proposed in this paper provides an effective integrated scheduling method for decision-makers at various levels of a program.

     

Project Planning and Prioritization in the Social Services–an OR Contribution

This paper describes a study carried out for the Social Services Department of a UK County Council towards the development of a system for the evaluation and prioritization of project-based work. There are three major components of the study; an activity analysis to investigate how managers in the department spend their time, with a view to establishing a time budget for the project work; a pilot study to introduce a simple system for project planning and workload balancing with a specialist team; and the development of a multiple criteria model for the evaluation and prioritization of projects. We envisaged a Decision Support System which integrated all of these elements; however, this was never developed; instead, the resultant benefits were of a very different nature. We reflect on the reasons for this and the implications for the success of the study.     

A possibilistic-valued multi-criteria decision-making support for marketing activities in e-commerce: Feedback Based Diagnosis System

In this paper we propose a multi-criteria decision making support system, called a “Feedback Based Diagnosis System” (FBDS), to aid the marketing team of an e-commerce (EC) organisation in its activities. The FBDS database is composed of customers’ satisfaction measures. These measures are related to the different services an EC offers to its customers. Thus, they constitute a multi-criteria (MC) evaluation of EC performances. In the general framework of recommender systems, these available MC evaluations are considered as useful information for other customers to help them to objectively, rationally and exhaustively assess and compare the numerous ECs among the ones likely to meet their needs. Our FBDS is not concerned with improving or automating such a recommendation process for customers. Indeed, it is merely EC management team oriented. In fact, the MC feedback database is used to diagnose the EC health and improve its strategy. In the proposed FBDS, a possibilistic framework is combined with the multi criteria representation to capture the variability and the divergence of customers’ evaluations w.r.t. each criterion. Then, an aggregation based on a weighted arithmetic mean (WAM) is proposed to obtain a synthetic appraisal of ECs. The WAM aggregation models the strategy agreed on by the EC management team. Computing the synthesis score of an EC consists in propagating the uncertainty related to its partial scores through the WAM. The possibilistic representation guarantees that no information is lost in the collective evaluation process by the consumers’ community. However, diagnosis indicators are finally proposed to the marketing team to make the interpretation of some possibilistic results more comprehensive when necessary.