Track: Healthcare Operations and Services

Abstract

In Thai public hospitals, a hospital meal demand did not come from an inward admitted patient's desire but medically indicated by a medical professional. Moreover, it will be known only after a daily bedside diagnosis of each patient. A hospital self-operated kitchen system in Thai hospitals uses static production planning by predetermined production quantity in advance of actual production for a week. Unlike in the new Danish public hospitals, patients can select their meals listed on a menu based on their health condition. Danish hospitals' centralized kitchen acted as a production hub providing postponed food to its network hospital within its area. Therefore, this paper explores how public hospitals in these two different countries manage and control their catering production systems. Two public hospitals in Thailand and one public hospital in Denmark are select as a case study. With the exploratory research approach, a result not only explored a detail of its supply chain and operations, including inbound operations, production, and outbound operations from the selected case study hospitals in both countries. But it also reflects a different principle on planning hospital catering system between these two countries.