Heuristics for Hospital Inventory Management

Abstract

This study investigated the reasoning strategies used by hospital logistics management experts and was conducted at the Wright-Patterson AFB (WPAFB) Medical Center. An expert system was developed to verify the captured strategies. The particular area of interest of this study was the reasoning strategies involved in the reconciliation of the Monthly Stock Status Report within the Medical Logistics Branch. A literature review revealed there were few guidelines as to when and what action to pursue when reconciling the Monthly Stock Status Report. Though there were no references in the literature on expert systems that dealt with this particular report, there were many references to the development of such an expert system. The research was done in three phases. The first phase was knowledge acquisition which is when the researcher interviewed the expect and did the initial formulation of the reasoning strategy. During the second phase, the researcher developed an expert system which was then validated in the third phase. The validation revealed the expert system made the same decision as the human expert over 98% of the time in the validation data sets. It was therefore concluded the reasoning strategies were captured.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1991
Accession Number
ADA246877

Entities

People

  • Thomas G. Hibson

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • C4I
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Languages
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Databases
  • Department Of Defense
  • Engineering
  • Expert Systems
  • Grammars
  • Inference Engines
  • Inventory Control
  • Logistics Management
  • Mainframe Computers
  • Management Personnel
  • Plastic Explosives

Readers

  • Logistics and Supply Chain Management.
  • Mathematical Modeling and Probability Theory.
  • Organizational Process Management (OPM).