Tag: Capacity Management

OM in the News: Smarter Hospital Alarms Show How Better Processes Save Lives

Hospitals are some of the most complex operations environments in the world, writes The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 29, 2026). Thousands of interdependent processes—clinical workflows, monitoring systems, documentation, staffing, and technology—must function with precision. When any part of that system becomes noisy, inefficient, or overloaded, the consequences can be serious. A striking example comes from an unlikely OM case study: hospital alarm fatigue.

In modern care units, monitors and pumps generate constant beeps signaling everything from minor fluctuations to life‑threatening deterioration. For patients, the noise disrupts sleep and recovery. For nurses, the sheer volume of alarms creates cognitive overload, making it harder to distinguish true danger from routine variation. In OM terms, this is a quality‑control failure caused by excessive false positives, poor signal design, and misaligned workflow triggers.

Researchers are now applying OM thinking to redesign the alarm ecosystem.

Reducing Non‑Actionable Variation Stanford Medicine introduced time delays and conditional triggers to filter out brief, self‑correcting changes in vital signs. This is classic process‑control logic: eliminate noise so workers can focus on meaningful signals. The results were dramatic—alarm volume dropped by up to 82% without compromising safety. Nurses reported better responsiveness, demonstrating how reducing process clutter improves human performance.

Human‑Centered Design for Quality Another team is redesigning alarms using principles from music cognition. Instead of harsh electronic tones, alarms use recognizable “auditory icons” and musical cues to convey urgency and type of problem. This is OM’s human‑factors engineering at work: improving quality by making information more intuitive, reducing worker stress, and speeding decision‑making.

Predictive Systems to Prevent Failure The most powerful OM innovation may be the machine‑learning tool Concern, which analyzes patterns in nursing documentation to detect deterioration before vital signs trigger alarms. It provides a quiet, color‑coded risk indicator rather than another disruptive alert. In a 60,000‑patient trial, units using Concern saw lower mortality and shorter stays. This is proactive capacity and risk management, shifting from reaction to prevention.

The OM Lesson Alarm fatigue isn’t just a clinical issue—it’s an operations problem. Smarter triggers, better signal design, and predictive analytics show how OM principles can transform safety, reduce waste, and improve outcomes in high‑stakes environments.

Classroom Discussion Questions

  1. How should hospitals balance the need for constant patient monitoring with the risks of alarm fatigue?
  2. What lessons from hospital alarm redesign—such as smarter triggers, better sound design, or early‑warning systems—could be applied to other industries that rely heavily on alerts?

Guest Post: Airline Loyalty Programs and Operations Management

Prof. Howard Weiss developed the POM and Excel OM software that we provide free with our text

To use one of Delta Airline’s more than 50 Sky Club airport lounges, a client can either purchase access from Delta, or use Delta SkyMiles, or gain access by owning an American Express (Amex) Platinum credit card. One of the Platinum card’s main selling point is its extensive lounge coverage for multiple airlines. During COVID, while there was less travel and thus less miles being accumulated due to travel, customers were charging more than usual to their Amex cards, enabling them to get elite status with Delta. It also allowed SkyMiles to rollover from one year to the next during COVID. This led to Delta’s lounges becoming overcrowded. And it turns out Delta does not have enough capacity on its special phone lines to afford its elite customers a pleasant experience.

 

100 Person line waiting to enter JFK Sky Club

This capacity issue caused Delta to make changes effective in 2025 that will make it harder to access Sky Clubs, and thus reduce the crowding. Delta has raised the price of club membership for those purchasing access to the lounges, restricted membership to SkyMiles elite members, and placed a limit on how long one can stay in the lounge prior to a flight.

The Forecasting chapter in your Heizer/Render/Munson textbook discusses demand management and notes that Disney limits its “FastPass+” reservations, which is similar to Delta limiting its elite status members. But Disney can impose different limits on a daily or weekly basis based on the demand forecast, whereas Delta’s limits will be implemented over the long term. The Capacity Planning chapter (Supp. 7) notes that demand can be reduced by raising prices, which is identical to Delta’s actions of both raising the number of miles required for elite status benefits and raising prices to belong to SkyClub.

Needless to say this has caused a great deal of backlash from Delta customers. Surveys show that 81% of consumers say loyalty programs are important to their decision on which product or service to purchase. In addition, at the big five U.S. carriers, the share of revenue generated by loyalty programs increased from 12% in 2019 to 16% in 2021. Thus, Delta cannot afford to lose these customers.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Why doesn’t Delta simply hire more staff for the lounges and the phone lines?
2. What factor besides loyalty programs would drive customers to a certain airline?