In March 2017, a pharmacy in Berlin encountered a personnel scheduling problem. The pharmacy’s key activity was serving customers in-store with ready-made medication. These services had to be offered during regular opening hours, on occasional Sundays, and during pre-assigned emergency-service shifts. In addition, customer-specific formulations had to be prepared, and certain office duties had to be performed. A particular aspect of the problem was .....more

Instructor spreadsheet to accompany product 8B18D022.

Student spreadsheet to accompany product 9B18D022.

Teaching note for product 9B18D022.

Developed as a companion to the Red Brand Canners (RBC) case, the starting point in this case is the improvement in performance resulting from the optimization approach in the original case. However, RBC’s vice president of operations is concerned about the quality and quantity mix of the most recent tomato crop received from Greenfield Farms (GF). RBC’s preferred quality and quantity mixes differ significantly from the current harvest. To RBC, the .....more

The director of the internal medicine department has to decide whether to recommend that St. Swithin's Hospital acquire equipment to aid in the diagnosis of Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT). St. Swithin's already has Doppler testing and Venography available to try to diagnose DVT, but these tests are not 100% accurate. New data on the performance of the equipment suggests that this may be a useful alternative. Treating patients on the basis of clinical .....more