This study investigates patient appointment scheduling and examination room assignment problems involving patients who undergo ultrasound examination with considerations of multiple examination rooms, multiple types of patients, multiple body parts to be examined, and special restrictions. Following are the recommended time intervals based on the findings of three scenarios in this study: In Scenario 1, the time interval recommended for patients’ arrival at the radiology department on the day of the examination is 18 min. In Scenario 2, it is best to assign patients to examination rooms based on weighted cumulative examination points. In Scenario 3, we recommend that three outpatients come to the radiology department every 18 min to undergo ultrasound examinations; the number of inpatients and emergency patients arriving for ultrasound examination is consistent with the original time interval distribution. Simulation optimization may provide solutions to the problems of appointment scheduling and examination room assignment problems to balance the workload of radiological technologists, maintain high equipment utilization rates, and reduce waiting times for patients undergoing ultrasound examination.

Drug inventory management is an important part of hospital management. The large amounts of drug data in hospitals bring challenges to optimizing the setting values for the safety stock and the maximum inventory of each drug. This study combined a two-stage clustering method with an inventory policy (s, S) and established a simulation optimization model for the case hospital’s outpatient pharmacy. This research used the simulation optimization software Arena OptQuest, developed by Rockwell Automation Inc (Rockwell Automation, Coraopolis, PA, USA), in order to determine the minimum and maximum values (s, S) of the best stock amounts for each drug under the considerations of cost and related inventory constraints. The research results showed that the minimum and maximum inventory settings for each drug in the simulation model were better than those set by the case outpatient pharmacy system. The average inventory cost was reduced by 55%, while the average inventory volume was reduced by 68%. The proposed method can improve management efficiency and inventory costs of hospital pharmacies without affecting patient services and increasing the inventory turnover rate of the drugs.

This research uses a case study methodology to investigate ways of improving the outgoing quality assurance (OQA) processes of a 12-inch wafer foundry. It applies the value stream mapping method of lean production to analyse the wafer OQA processes. The study ensures that all outgoing wafers satisfy customers’ requirements without waste. In this paper, a current state map is used to locate potential waste and problematic process flows. Meanwhile, system simulation is adopted to construct the automatic material handling system and the equipment, transportation, and dispatching automation production module for the OQA processes—namely, the To-Be model and the future state map. The empirical results show that, for the To-Be model, the total lots of three customers per month increased from 3,106 to 3,719 pieces—about a 20% increase—and that the average product cycle time for customers A, B, and C dropped by 43.67%, 57.91%, and 58.39%, respectively. Furthermore, the operators’ utilisation rate increased from 61% of 10 operators on the day and night shifts to 87.26% of seven operators on the day and night shifts—about a 30% decrease of labour costs. Therefore, this study applies lean production (removing the non-value-added activities) and automation to improve the case company’s wafer OQA processes.