As part of a wider improvement initiative, the hospital manager is considering how the hospital's blood bank service can be made more efficient and more effective. At present, the main blood bank,where donated blood is stored,is at a large regional hospital about 80km away. The local hospital has only a small blood bank facility where typically only a few days' supply of blood can be safely stored. The regional hospital routinely supplies blood on an anticipated or forecast basis and these stocks are replenished every few days or, in the event of a stock shortage at the local hospital, can be shipped through at a few hours notice (although at considerable cost). The hospital manager is reviewing a number of options and has heard (vaguely) about the use of multi-criteria methods. She has asked you to develop an outline multi-criteria model to help her reach a decision between the options.

The options under consideration are:

Option A: continue the existing system. In one sense this would be the easiest option. However, it also carries some risks as the hospital occasionally experiences times when it runs out of stocks of certain blood types and emergency supplies have to be sent across from the regional hospital. The cost of this is high (because of the specialist transportation needed) contributing to budget overspend and there are also clinical risks for patients. There have also been occasions in some winters where emergency supplies have not been able to be sent because of severe weather conditions.

Option B: expand the blood bank at the local hospital to allow it to carry its own stock requirements in full. The local blood bank would then be effectively independent which would contribute tominimisingrisk to patients of blood supply shortage. However, the capital cost of this would be high (roughly estimated at about 0.75 million) and in the current economic climate might be difficult to obtain. Once built the hospital would also incur higher annual running costs(again roughly estimated at around 175,000 per year). Senior medical staff might be unhappy at this, and have commentedthat the money would be better spent employing more doctors and nurses.

Option C: improve the local hospital's Management Information System (MIS) and stock control system (SCS). At present the local hospital does little to try to predict blood use requirements or to manage its blood stocks effectively.This option would focus on two things. First, better analysis and forecasting of blood use requirements in the hospital linkedto the scheduling of patient treatments and surgical operations. It is felt that this would enable the hospital to better and more accurately predict the blood it requires. Secondly,investing in an up-to-datestock control system so that blood supplies are more effectively tracked and monitoredtoreducewastage, stock levels and associated costs.Most of the effort under this option would go into the development of better IT/IS systems.Anticipated development costs are around 100,000 with ongoing costs on an annual basis of around 50,000. The exact tangible benefits from this are very difficult to quantify although the manager thinks that wastage will be reduced.

Required:Analyse the decision problem facing the hospital manager using multi-attribute value analysis supported by the V.I.S.A software

HINT:Each group member should role-play different actors within this decision problem.For example, roles include the analyst/facilitatorand different stakeholders. This will give you the opportunity toexperience managing/participating indecision analysis.

Your report on the analysis should:

Discuss the roles you played and how you used the CAUSE framework,or other approaches,to support your problem structuring

Discuss the development of a value tree for the analysis of alternatives

Explain the process of scoring and weighting you have used (and include a table or graph of values)

Discuss the synthesis of information for each stakeholder or scenario and compare resultsacross stakeholders / scenarios

Carry out appropriate sensitivity analyses and outline what you learned from these

Recommend a course of action (this may be a decision, a need to consider further alternatives, a need to design a more robust or betteralternative etc ...)