04. Process analysis Flashcards
what is the objective of operations management
Improve performance and quality of processes.
What is process
sequence of tasks that are using resources (human, machine, tools, materials) to product and deliver a product or service to a customer.
- Process is a recurring, repeating event
o E.g. serving customer in a restaurant, produce spare parts, plan exams in school
- Process always has a goal, objective and result
o Always benefits one or more customers
o Always part of a set of customers – suppliers’ relationship
Again, we use the Six Sigma (DMAIC) – Process improvement project management methodology.
Objective of the Define phase?
- Process (What?): what is the is the objective of my improvement project? Which process? Where does it start & finish? What are its limits / its scope?
- VoC (Why?): what are the objectives of the process? What are the customers’ expectations? For whom do i need to improve?
What do we need model processes to do?
- Identify: Which process? Producing which results (Product or service)? For which customers?
- Describe: which steps / activities / Tasks possess? in what sequence/order?
- Set the limits: Where does it start and finish?
- Communicate: In which form? For which public / audience? Why? What is the goal?
3 process models we will learn this semster?
- Flowchart
- Swimlanes flowchart
- SIPOC diagram
what do we need to write down before starting a process modelling?
Any process starts by textual description of its various steps / activities / task
- Taking the order
- Inputting the order and print ticket
- Preparing the ordered drinks
- Putting the order (+ticket) on a tray
- Serving the customers
- …..
What’s a flowchart?
Genetic name for any visual / graphical description of a flow or process
It has little rules or predefined formalism, adaptable according to the needs and context
Rules and standards applicable for this course:
What’sa swimlane flowchart?
This when we take the following graph (could be a flowchart) and divide each section and turn it into a Swimlane chart. This is part of the “Define” Process in the DMAIC process
sections in this graph are divided into the company/organisation who handles these tasks.
Problem of this chart is that there are a lot of hand over of guests between the different departments, this would often create an issue due to miscommunication.
What are the two criterias when dividing different secitons of the swimlane flowchart?
divide according to Resources and Location
What is SIPOC diagram modelling?
Point is dividing the operation process into what we learn before and analyse it: Used in “Define” DMAIC
Supplier – Input – Processes – Output – Customer (SIPOC)
This is the most adapted to highlight the relationship between processes and customers.
Example: Table services process in a bar. (same e.g. as before)
what are the two things we need to do in the process analysis define phase?
Once we have:
- What: modelled / described the process
- Why: identified and formalised the customer needs and expectations
what do we need to include in a define phase’s project charter?
- Context: e.g. table service in a bar
- Problem: attendance increase, customer satisfaction, wrong accounting data
- Objective: reducing times, accounting accuracy.
- Method: Measure, analyses improvement, control, MAIC
What are the 2 things we need to measure in process analysis?
- Capacity of the process: indicator of how much production i can deliver with my processes.
o Quantity per unit of time of process output (production unit)
o Notion of outflow
o Quantity or Number per Minute, Hour or Day (time unit) - Cycle time (or Lead time) of the process
o Time needed to go through the whole process
o Notion of speed
o Time (second, minutes, hours)
o E.g. time takes from the check in all to giving the keys to the guests
Define Capacity and cycle time
Capacity: Number of tables served per hour
Cycle Time: Time needed to serve a table. i.e. how much time taken in total from the 1st task to the last task.
formular to calculate capacity
Capacity = Number resources / Duration
how do you define the capacity of the whole process?
Capacity of the process is the taks with the minimum capacity
What are bottle necks
The task with the lowest capacity: It limits us from delivering the service, we convert the process analyses into a line graph, then the one with the lowest point will be our bottleneck.
- It will generate waiting lines.
- We need to balance the demand (or traffic), generating a workload.
- The capacity (or flow) of the process.
What happens when:
Workload > Capacity
Capacity > Workload
Workload > Capacity: Under-capacity, you have more clients then you can handle
- You have an incapacity to satisfy the demand
- Loss of revenue
Capacity > Workload: Over-capacity: you have more staff than people showing up
- Inefficiency of the process
- Unnecessary costs
how to incrase capacity throught bottleneck?
Acting on the capacity of a task/activity:
- Number of resources: increase existing resources – will lead to high cost e.g. more staff
- Duration of the task: If you take 5 mins in check-in how can you shorten that time?
- Redesigning the process: Change the structure
o “Merging” several tasks: putting two tasks together
o Putting in parallel some tasks
o Completely redesigning the tasks; bring new methods to change the time; new technologies, and new resources.
What is value stream analysis?
Value Stream Mapping (VSM) Diagram:
- Another process modelling method coming from the Lean Six Sigma methodology, highlighting the value of the different activities of a process.
What is value stream analysis’s objective?
Objective:
- To identify added-value & non-added-value tasks
- To then work on eliminating or reducing non-added-value tasks
- And if possible, to reduce/speed-up added-value tasks
whatis value added time and non value added time?
and total cycle time?
how to calculate procycle efficiency?
VA-Value added time: The time we spend performing tasks
Non-value-added time: the time we spend switching between tasks that does not bring value to the guests.
Total cycle time: Value added + non-value-added time (top line + bottom line)
Total cycle time = 24.5 minutes
Process cycle efficiency = Total value-added time / total cycle time
Process cycle efficiency = 15.5 / 24.5 = 64%
- We can try to reduce the non-value-added time, this could increase our efficiency.
- Different efficiency time could vary depending on the type of businesses you are in.
