Chapter 8 Flashcards
Control relocation
Move controls towards customer.
Disadvantage: higher probability of fraud.
This will improve the quality, however to increase the costs.
Contract reduction
reduce the number of contacts with customer and third parties,
Disadvantage: Loss of essential information.
This will decrease the time and quality, however will increase the costs.
Integration
Integration with a business process of the customer or a supplier
Disadvantage: mutual dependence grows and therefore, flexibility decreases
This will improve the time and lower the costs, however decreases the flexibility
Case Types
Determine whether activities are related to the same type of cases, if necessary distinguish new business processes.
This will lower the time and costs, however will decreases the quality and flexibility
Activity elimination
Eliminate unnecessary activities from a business process (activity that does not add value from a customer’s point of view)
This will lower the time and costs, however decreases the quality
Case-based work
Consider removing batch-processing and periodic activities from a business process. E.g. case is slowed down by periodic activities (depends on computer system)
This will decrease the time, and increase the cost
Triage
Consider the division of a general activity into two or more alternative activities.
An alternative form of the triage heuristic is to divide an activity into similar instead of alternative activities for different subcategories of the cases being processed.
This will increase the cost, and decreases flexibility and increase the quality
Activitiy Composition
Combine small activities into composite activities and divide large activiites into workable smaller activities
Time: +
Cost: +
Flexibility: -
Resequencing
Move activities to a more appropriate places.
Time: +
Cost: +
Parallelism
Consider whether activities may be executed in parallel
Time: +
Cost: -
Flexibility: -
Knok-out
Order knock-outs in an increasing order of effort and decreasing order of termination probabilty
knok-out: Termination of a part of the business due to a condition that is not met
Time: -
Cost: +
Exception
Design business processes for typical cases and isolate exceptional cases from the normal flow
Time: +
Cost: -
Quality: +
Case Assignment
Let workers perform as many steps as possible for single cases.
For each activity execution the participant is selected who has worked on the case before.
Quality: +
Flexibility: -
Flexible assignment
Assign work in such a way that maximal flexibility is preserved for the near future.
Assign most specialized person to activity, likelihood to commit free resource to another work package is maximal.
Time: +
Cost: -
Flexibility: +
Centralization
Treat geographically dispersed resources as if they are centralized
Time: +
Cost: -
Flexibility: +
Split responsibilities
Avoid shared responsibilties for tasks by people from different functional units
Quality: +
Flexibility: -
Customer teams
Consider to compose work teams of people from different departments that will take care of the complete handling of specific sorts of cases
Quality: +
Flexibility: -
Numerical involvement
Minimize the number of departments, groups and persons involved in a business process.
Time: +
Cost: -
Flexibility: -
Case Manager
Appoint one person to be responsible for the handling of each type of case, the case manager.
Cost: -
Quality: +
Extra resources
If capability is insufficient, consider increasing the available number of resources
Time: +
Cost: -
Flexibilty: +
Specialist - generalist
Consider to deepen or broaden the skills of resources
Time: +
Quality: +
Flexibility: -
Empower
Giver workers most of the decision-making authority instead of relying on middle management
Time: +
Quality; -
Flexibility: +
Control addition
Check the completeness and correctness of incoming materials and check the output before it sent to the customer
Time: -
Cost: -
Quality: +
Buffering
Instead of requesting information form an external source, buffer it and subscribe to updates
Time: +
Cost: -
Activity automation
Cost:+
Quality: -
Time: +
Flexibility: -
Integral technology
Try to elevate physical contstraints in a business process by applying new technologies
Cost: +
Quality: =
Trusted party
Instead of determining information oneself, use the results of a trusted party
Cost: +
Quality: -
Time: +
Flexibility: -
Outsourcing
Consider outsourcing a business process completely or parts of it
Cost: +
Quality: +
Flexibility: -
Interfacing
Consider a standard interface with customers and partners
Cost: +
Time: +
Flexibility: -
What is the Devil’s Quadrangle?
This framework is based on the four performance dimensions, namely time, cost, quality and flexibility.
Ideally, a business process redesign decreases the time required to handle a case, it lowers the required cost of executing the process, it improves the quality of the service delivered, and it increases the ability of the business process to deal with variation. The interesting property of this framework is how it expresses that improving a process in one dimension may have a weakening effect on another.
What are the three level of abstractions for methods with respect to process redesign?
- A methodology, the highest level of abstraction, is defined as a collection of problem-solving methods governed by a set of principles and a common philosophy for solving targeted problems.
- At the next level of abstraction, a technique is defined as a set of precisely described procedures for achieving a standard task
- At the lowest, most concrete level a tool is defined as a computer software package to support one or more techniques
