Created in 1983, Apollo Hospitals is one of the biggest hospital chains in India. In 2014, Apollo had 32 hospitals spread across the United States. The focus of this case is of the Apollo Hospital at Bangalore. The quality head, Dr. Ananth Rao was worried about the food statement that accounted for 4% of the total cost and needed to develop a forecasting model to estimate the demand for food and drinks being served to its patients for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Exact forecasting will help them to minimize the wastage of food causing decline in food invoice. Apollo served about 120 food items from its kitchen. Dr Rao considered that the need for food was dependent on the occupancy level (amount of in patients) of the hospital. Moreover, he also anticipated a short term trend in the food requirement because patients are likely to order similar food during their course of stay in the hospital - this is because of dietary restrictions as also the truth that folks would generally not desire to experiment with food in a hospital environment.
The profile of the patients in the hospital is not likely to vary significantly over a time frame and thus it is expected the food tendency will not change much with time.
PUBLICATION DATE: May 01, 2014 PRODUCT #: IMB463-PDF-ENG
This is just an excerpt. This case is about TECHNOLOGY & OPERATIONS
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