Using Discrete Event Simulation to evaluate Operating Theater Layout

The layout planning of an organization is known to have a great impact on its quality and performance during daily operations. The Operating Theater (OT) is an organization characterized by a fluctuating production and unpredictability of care demand. This unpredictability of populations’ needs has an impact on the required human and material resources and makes the OT a dynamic environment. To deal with this stochastic property when planning the OT layout, we developed a robust optimization approach combining mathematical programming, discrete event simulation (DES), and improvement heuristics. The model aims to generate a robust OT layout considering various scenarios with stochastic patient flows.