Introduction: Benchmarking can be used to improve hospital performance. It is however not easy to develop a concise and meaningful set of indicators on aspects related to operations management. We developed an indicator set for managers and evaluated its use in an international benchmark of radiotherapy centres. The indicator set assessed the efficiency, patient-centeredness and timeliness of the services delivered.

Methods: We identified possible indicators from literature and professionals. Stakeholders’ feedback helped to produce a shortlist of indicators. For this indicator set, data were obtained in a pilot that included four European radiotherapy centres. With these data, the indicators were evaluated on definition clarity, data availability, reliability and discriminative value.

Results: Literature produced a gross list of 81 indicators. Based on stakeholder feedback, 33 indicators were selected and evaluated in the benchmark. Six negatively evaluated indicators were adapted, together with eight positively evaluated indicators 14 indicators seemed feasible. Examples of indicators concerned utilisation, waiting times, patient satisfaction and risk analysis.

Conclusions: This study provides a pragmatic indicator development process for international benchmarks on operations management. The presented indicators showed to be feasible for use in international benchmarking of radiotherapy centres. The pilot identified attainable performance levels and provided leads for improvements.

Most systems are characterized by uncertainties that cause throughput to be highly variable, for example, many modern production processes and services are substantially affected by random yields. When yield is random, not only is the usable quantity uncertain, but the random yield reduces usable capacity and throughput in the system. For these reasons, strategies are needed that incorporate random yield. This paper presents the analysis of the newsvendor model with a general random yield distribution, including the derivation of the optimal order quantity. Results are shown to converge to the basic newsvendor model for the case of perfect yield, and are further demonstrated using the case of general multiplicative random yield. Results have significant impact on both manufacturing and service sectors since the newsvendor model applies to many real-world situations.