shortage – OM in the News

Short-Term Housing Rentals Lead to Housing Shortages

Housing availability has plummeted while housing costs have skyrocketed for residents of Florence, Italy, in the wake of popularity for shorter rentals via platforms like Airbnb.

The housing shortage leaves lower income Italians and students particularly hard pressed to find affordable housing. In the absence of action by the central government, the city of Florence has taken matters into its own hands, banning new short-term residential leases on sites like Airbnb. Other cities around the world have faced similar problems.

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By Lisa M. Spencer|2023-10-27T04:12:23+00:00October 27, 2023|Tags: aggregate planning, capacity planning, inventory management, shortage|

Demand for AI Chips Leads to Unbalanced Supply Chain

Demand for chips and memory for high-performance computing in AI applications has led to South Korean manufacturer SK hynix’s role as the main memory chip supplier for companies such as NVIDIA and Meta.

NVIDIA’s demand for HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) chips and Meta’s demand for DDR5 (Double Data Rate 5) memory have caused an order backlog for SK hynix, creating an “unbalanced” supply chain.

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Nvidia, Meta talk up capital expenditures towards A.I. in earnings calls (July […]

By Anita Lee-Post, Ph.D.|2023-09-15T04:07:42+00:00September 15, 2023|Tags: artificial intelligence, automation, bottleneck, capacity planning, shortage, supply and demand, technology|

The Chronic Pain of Drug Shortages

Despite repeated warnings that critical drugs have been and will remain in short supply, corrective action has been painfully elusive.

A confluence of factors contribute to the persistence of the problem. These factors have been identified multiple times over the years, but addressing them and their effects on patients’ health requires overall system changes that call for full congressional and business cooperation. The current blog does not cover the policy changes needed for improvement; they are beyond its scope. However, it […]

By Corinne M. Karuppan, Ph.D.|2023-04-03T19:59:23+00:00April 5, 2023|Tags: bullwhip effect, competitivness, continuous replenishment, flexible-manufacturing, inventory management, JIT, lead time, logistics, outsourcing, productivity, respsonsive supply chain design, safety stock, shortage, sourcing, strategic capacity management, supply chain management|

Profits Over Patients: Here Come the Roaches!

America’s largest hospital company has been putting patients at risk.

To increase profits, they have cut their staff and shrunk maintenance budgets, resulting in higher occurrences of sentinel events, including patient deaths. Both doctors and nurses have complained about the situation, but there seems to be a disconnect between the clinical staff and the leadership. In fact, hospital critics have been reprimanded. Money that could be used to fix the problems is allocated to bed capacity increases which boost revenue.

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By Corinne M. Karuppan, Ph.D.|2023-03-07T20:56:37+00:00March 8, 2023|Tags: competitivness, service quality, short term capacity, shortage, strategic capacity management, strategy, value, value analysis|