INFS1000 Lec 9 Process Improvement

Question 1

What are the 3 ways you can improve your business process model?

Answer 1

1. OUTPUT related improvements
2. ACTIVITY related improvements
3. RESOURCE related improvements

Question 2

Define (1) Output rate, (2) Throughput / flow rate.

Answer 2

1. Output rate: amount of P/S produced by a BUSINESS PROCESS per unit of time.
2. Throughput rate / Flow rate: rate at which units flow through a SPECIFIC ACTIVITY in the business process.

Question 3

Define (3) Process capacity, (4) Capacity utilisation.

Answer 3

3. Process capacity: max possible output rate of business process per unit of time.
4. Capacity utilisation: % of process capacity that is actually used. (Output rate / Process capacity).

Question 4

Define (5) Lead time, (6) Activity time, (7) Activity resource requirement.

Answer 4

5. Lead time: AVE time required for a BUSINESS PROCESS from start to end. (e.g. regardless if they wanted coffee / cookie.
6. Activity time: AVE time required for a SPECIFIC ACTIVITY in the business process. (e.g. time to make coffee only)
7. Activity resource requirements: AVE units of resources required for SPECIFIC ACTIVITY in the business process. (e.g. man hours, costs).

Question 5

What are the 3 additional pieces of info to facilitate analysis?

Answer 5

1. Probability of eXclusive gateways
2. Activity times
3. Activity resource requirements

Question 6

What are the 4 ways for OUTCOME related improvements?

Outcomes: Not just the final outputs of the process but the outputs of intermediate activities as well (e.g. an order, an invoice, semi-finished products).

Answer 6

1. ELIMINATION of unnecessary outcomes (zero-based start method - justifcations have to be made to be reincorporated).
2. SUBSTITUTION with more effective / efficient ones.
3. DIGITISATION (e.g. electronic receipts cheaper / quicker to store copy distribute).
4. HARMONISATION of outcomes

Question 7

What is HORIZONTAL and VERTICAL harmonisation?

Answer 7

Horizontal: standardising docs / products along same business process. (E.g. structuring quotes / invoices same way).

Vertical: standardising and integrating processes that take place in PARALLEL for ECONOMIES OF SCALE. (e.g. integrating processes from multiple channels (online/offline) or different product lines.)

Question 8

What are the 7 ways for ACTIVITY related improvements?

Answer 8

1. Elimination of NON-VALUE-ADDING activities (lean management).
2. Move from PUSH to PULL principle. (Rationale: processes following pull principle have no bottleneck).
3. Elimination of BOTTLENECKS by increasing throughput rate.
4. AUTOMATION (e.g. substituting manual activities with IT apps).
5. PARALLEL ROUTING for activities that are not interdependent of each other.
6. SUBSTITUTION MEHTODS: replace time-consuming activities (e.g. serve raw food instead of cooking). Include complementary pre-process tasks that reduce LEAD TIME (e.g. pre-cooking).
7. Increase PROBABILITY of more efficient pathways.

Question 9

What are the 2 ways for RESOURCE related improvements?

Answer 9

1. INTEGRATION of activities to make your resources “do more”. (i.e. Job enlargement - same difficulty e.g. sorting + distributing mail, and job enrichment - more challenging, e.g. production + quality control).
2. ASSIGNMENT of resources more specifically because practice increases efficiency. (i.e. specialisation).