Proceedings of the 2009 Industrial Engineering Research Conference Technology Assessment for an Inventory Management Process in a Hospital Unit Angelica Burbano, Behlul Saka, Ronald Rardin, Manuel Rossetti Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Arkansas 4207 Bell Engineering Center, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701, USA Abstract The penetration of Auto Identification and Data Capture Technology (Auto ID DC) in healthcare logistics is low. A recent American Health Association (AHA) study shows that 16% of hospitals use barcode technology for supply chain management purposes, and 3% use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Hospital materials managers find it difficult to evaluate the impact of Auto ID DC technologies on current processes in order to make a decision about whether or not to adopt a technological alternative. This paper studies the impact of Auto ID DC technologies on the inventory management process in a hospital unit. In particular we will refer to implantable devices within a catheterization lab. We propose a conceptual design of the system and a quantitative modeling approach to handle these issues, and present our preliminary results from a spreadsheet-based tool. Keywords Auto ID DC Technologies, barcodes, RFID, hospital unit inventory management, quantitative modeling 1. Introduction Auto ID DC technologies have been shown to improve process efficiency and reduce errors associated with transactions and data entry; however, a recent American Health Association (AHA) study shows that only 16% of hospitals are fully using barcode technology for supply chain management purposes and only 3% fully using RFID[1]. Hospital materials managers lack the tools to evaluate the impact of Auto ID DC technologies on current processes and thus find it difficult to show the benefits of the technology and justify its adoption. The purpose of this research is to alleviate this barrier to assessing Auto ID DC technology, so that a hospital system administrator can know whether the technology will be beneficial to their institution. This paper describes the development of a spreadsheet-based tool to evaluate the impact of Auto ID DC technologies on the inventory management process of a catheterization lab (cath lab). The product and environmental characteristics within this hospital unit represent a challenge for inventory management purposes. Typical items within a cath lab are implantable devices. These items are characterized by high unit costs, short shelf lives, and a large number of stock keeping units (SKUs). The processes used to track these items are complex and may be suitable for improvement via the adoptions of technology. The environment is characterized by high product technology innovation and the frequent introduction of new product models. This causes items to be outdated and makes demand management challenging. The processes that can be improved with technology are the ones related to product consumption at the point of use and replenishment cycle. A model to establish the impact of Auto ID DC technologies on the outlined processes is the main contribution of this paper. The paper is structured as follows. A review of Auto ID DC technologies in hospitals will be given in Section 2. In Section 3, the conceptual design of the system will be explained followed by the modeling approach in Section 4. The scalability of the model will be discussed in Section 5. The paper ends with preliminary results and the conclusions in Sections 6 and 7, respectively. 2. Review of Auto ID DC Technologies The basic principle behind Auto ID DC technologies such as barcodes or RFID is identification of the items that flow through a given process and capture the item related information. Then, without any manual data entry, this information is stored in a computer or information system. The aims of using Auto ID DC technology are increasing process efficiency, reducing data entry errors and freeing staff to perform more value added functions [2]. 791