Chapter 8

Question 1

Control relocation

Answer 1

Move controls towards customer.

Disadvantage: higher probability of fraud.

This will improve the quality, however to increase the costs.

Question 2

Contract reduction

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

Integration

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Case Types

Answer 4

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

Question 5

Activity elimination

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Case-based work

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Triage

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Activitiy Composition

Answer 8

Combine small activities into composite activities and divide large activiites into workable smaller activities

Time: +
Cost: +
Flexibility: -

Question 9

Resequencing

Answer 9

Move activities to a more appropriate places.

Time: +
Cost: +

Question 10

Parallelism

Answer 10

Consider whether activities may be executed in parallel

Time: +
Cost: -
Flexibility: -

Question 11

Knok-out

Answer 11

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: +

Question 12

Exception

Answer 12

Design business processes for typical cases and isolate exceptional cases from the normal flow

Time: +
Cost: -
Quality: +

Question 13

Case Assignment

Answer 13

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: -

Question 14

Flexible assignment

Answer 14

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: +

Question 15

Centralization

Answer 15

Treat geographically dispersed resources as if they are centralized

Time: +
Cost: -
Flexibility: +

Question 16

Split responsibilities

Answer 16

Avoid shared responsibilties for tasks by people from different functional units

Quality: +
Flexibility: -

Question 17

Customer teams

Answer 17

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: -

Question 18

Numerical involvement

Answer 18

Minimize the number of departments, groups and persons involved in a business process.

Time: +
Cost: -
Flexibility: -

Question 19

Case Manager

Answer 19

Appoint one person to be responsible for the handling of each type of case, the case manager.

Cost: -
Quality: +

Question 20

Extra resources

Answer 20

If capability is insufficient, consider increasing the available number of resources
Time: +
Cost: -
Flexibilty: +

Question 21

Specialist - generalist

Answer 21

Consider to deepen or broaden the skills of resources

Time: +
Quality: +
Flexibility: -

Question 22

Empower

Answer 22

Giver workers most of the decision-making authority instead of relying on middle management

Time: +
Quality; -
Flexibility: +

Question 23

Control addition

Answer 23

Check the completeness and correctness of incoming materials and check the output before it sent to the customer

Time: -
Cost: -
Quality: +

Question 24

Buffering

Answer 24

Instead of requesting information form an external source, buffer it and subscribe to updates
Time: +
Cost: -

Question 25

Activity automation

Answer 25

Cost:+
Quality: -
Time: +
Flexibility: -

Question 26

Integral technology

Answer 26

Try to elevate physical contstraints in a business process by applying new technologies

Cost: +
Quality: =

Question 27

Trusted party

Answer 27

Instead of determining information oneself, use the results of a trusted party

Cost: +
Quality: -
Time: +
Flexibility: -

Question 28

Outsourcing

Answer 28

Consider outsourcing a business process completely or parts of it

Cost: +
Quality: +
Flexibility: -

Question 29

Interfacing

Answer 29

Consider a standard interface with customers and partners

Cost: +
Time: +
Flexibility: -

Question 30

What is the Devil’s Quadrangle?

Answer 30

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.

Question 31

What are the three level of abstractions for methods with respect to process redesign?

Answer 31

1. 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.
2. At the next level of abstraction, a technique is defined as a set of precisely described procedures for achieving a standard task
3. At the lowest, most concrete level a tool is defined as a computer software package to support one or more techniques