From the course: Operations Management Foundations
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Focused factories
From the course: Operations Management Foundations
Focused factories
- [Instructor] In operations management, a facility that produces only one kind of a very specialized product or service is called a focused factory. Let's consider the Shouldice Center in Ontario, Canada. It's a very special type of medical facility. They perform only one service, external abdominal hernia operations. So what's so special about this hernia facility? Let's first consider what hernia surgery is. A hernia is a cavity in your abdominal lining, a hole. Like a hole in a couch, the stuffing starts coming out. Like a couch, a surgeon would find the hole, sew up the hole, put a mesh patch on you as a reinforcement and then let you heal. In the US, that procedure has a 10% defect rate. Can you imagine if Apple had a 10% defect rate on their digital devices? How about the Shouldice Center? The Shouldice Center does only hernia surgeries. They do them much faster and they don't use the mesh patch. Why?…
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