4.4 Adaquate Organisation of the Service Process

Flexibility in respect to the variety of different process carriers and economies of scale provoke this type of organisation. However, missing transparency about particular process chains and the costs of co-ordinating and transporting the different process carriers from one workshop to the other are easily neglected. Moreover, the time each process carrier stays in production is taken for granted. Capital is needed to finance the queues and the repositories inside the production process. Nevertheless, even if these direct costs can be low, the potential risk to loose customers because of slow delivery can be even more important.

4.5.2 Consequences for Service Organisation

Each way of organising the production has its generic advantages and disadvantages. However, depending on the situation only one combination of organisation types will be best. When organising a service there are two circumstances which will strongly effect the efficiency of the organisation type. The fact that supply takes place at time of production and that the customer must be integrated, indicates that the passage through time can not be taken for granted. In any ambulant medical service the process carrier will be a living patient. In production the workshop organisation can be most efficient, especially when the process carriers are cheap and production time is secondary. Instead in a service, a highly split workshop production will seldomly be adequate nor human, as the process carriers are of people and time is important factor. In respect to customer orientation workshop organisation will not be recommendable to ambulant medical service.

However, workshop organisation in ambulant medical service has been common. The main reason for that has been a lack of competition; in developed countries due to state regulations and in less developed countries due to missing medical infrastructure. The costs of waiting patients had no effect to the institutions. However, ever increasing competition will enlighten the true costs of workshop organisation in medical service. Moreover, work which until recently had to be divided can now be integrated thanks to the availability of equipment which can be handled by anyone without specialisation. Nevertheless, necessary specialisation and high costs of certain equipment will still give workshop organisation a limited place in ambulant medical care.

Site building organisation would be most customer friendly in medical service. In practice, this form will be limited to circumstances where the patient can not leave his home. So far the cost of visiting the patient with only limited instrumental devices are too high regarding usual patients. In our case of a selective eye treatment this type of organisation is not to be considered anyway.

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See [Dan93p.45f].