The effects of congestion in the daily management of a trauma hospital

Today’s healthcare organizations are under constant pressure for change, as hospitals should be able to offer their patients the best possible medical care with limited resources and, at the same time, to retain steady efficiency level in their operation. This is challenging, especially in trauma hospitals, in which the variation in the patient cases and volumes is relatively high. Furthermore, the trauma patient's care requires plenty of resources as most the patients have to be treated as single cases. Occasionally, the sudden increases in demand causes congestion in the operations of the hospital, which in Töölö hospital appears as an increase in the surgery waiting times within the yellow urgency class patients. An increase in the surgery waiting times may cause the diminution of the patient's condition, which also raises the surgery risks. The congestion itself causes overloading of the hospital capacity and staff. The aim of this master’s thesis is to introduce the factors contributing to the trauma process, and to examine the correlation between the different variables and the lengthened surgery waiting times. The results of this study are based on a three-year patient data and different quantitative analysis. Based on the analysis, a daily usable indicator was created in order to support the decision making in the operations management. By using the selected indicator, the effects of congestion can be acknowledged and the corrective action can also be taken more proactively.

CRM system implementation supporting the management of customer relationships

The purpose of this thesis is to examine customer relationship management in a large, global organization. The aim is to deepen the understanding on how CRM-system implementation can support customer relationship management in strategic, operational and analytical levels.

Spare Part Management of Bubbling Fluidized Bed Boiler

Energy generation industry is very capital-intensive industry. Productivity and availability requirements have increased while competition and quality requirement have increased. Maintenance has a significant role that these requirements can be reached. Even maintenance is much more than repairing faults nowadays, spare parts are important part of maintenance. Large power boilers are user-specific therefore features of boilers vary from project to project. Equipment have been designed to follow the customer’s requirements therefore spare parts are mainly user-specific also. The study starts with literature review introducing maintenance, failure mechanisms, and systems and equipment of bubbling fluidized bed boiler. At the final part spare part management is discussed from boiler technology point of view. For this part of the study science publications about spare part management are utilized also some specialist from a boiler technology company and other original equipment manufacturers were interviewed. Spare part management is challenging from the boiler supplier point of view and the end user of spare parts has a responsibility of stocking items. Criticality analysis can be used for finding most critical devices of the process and spare part management shall focus to those items. Spare parts are part of risk management. Stocking spare parts is increasing costs but then high spare part availability is decreasing delay time caused by fault of item.