A team from SNU Industrial Engineering won the Grand Prize at ‘The 8^th Korea University Student SCM Competition’

-able to reduce the overcrowding index of emergency room by 30% only through the process improvement.


▲ The team which won the Grand Prize at the 8th Korea University Student SCM Competition‘’

 
The Seoul National University College of Engineering (Dean Kun-woo Lee) announced that a team from the Department of the Industrial Engineering (4th grader Kim Ho-ki and Kim Dae-hoon), led by Professor Moon Ki-hyun won the Grand prize in the competition “The 8th Korea University Student SCM Competition” on June 2. The competition was hosted by the Korean Society of Supply Chain Management.   "
 
The team studied ways to reduce patient latency time through physician relocation and the introduction of new severity classes without additional human resources in the emergency room.
 
Currently, most emergency rooms use a severity classification scheme of 'KTAS' and 'ESI-4'. However, these methods needed to be improved because the ER exponent and average latency time was too high.

Therefore, the team of Industrial Engineering Department focused on the fact that the existing severity classification is made only by one step, they expanded the severity classification to two stages. In contrast to previous classifications of severity with only one treatment, students classify patients as CPR (respiratory resuscitation) patients, slightly injured patients, and severely injured patients in the newly proposed severity classification, and classify severely injured patients again.

When they test this method through simulation, it could reduce the overcrowding index of the emergency room by 30% as it first classify CPR patients and slightly injured patients. It has also been proven that the fatigue of doctors and nurses is significantly lowered. The results of this study are meaningful in a sense  that the improvement of the emergency room process through the adjustment of the severity classification system and the relocation of the resources without additional cost is achieved.
 
Professor Moon, who led the Industrial Engineering team, said, "The students have improved their ability to solve real-world problems by implementing computer simulation models through simulation-related hands-on projects. They could win the Grand prize thanks to their efforts.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Industrial Engineering was awarded the Grand Prize at the SCM competition 2013 and 2016. As they awarded the third Grand prize this year, they proved their competitiveness in SCM field.