W13 - Redesign

Source / Reference:

1) Week10-12 Lecture slides-Lecture 12: Redesign principles


2) Business Process Re-engineering: A Case study at Turku University of Applied Sciences
http://www.iseing.org/emcis/EMCIS2007/emcis07cd/EMCIS07-PDFs/631.pdf
Subject: Lecture 10-12- Redesign Principles and Case study of BPR
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Response:  


The business process introduced in the case study involves a human resource management process concerned with teaching in the university. The process involves organization of teaching resources for lecturers and professors to use in the classroom. Furthermore, the case study is more of a qualitative approach as mentioned in the paper.


Major problems described which are looked into are as follows: cycle time too slow, difficult to follow, lots of errors when adjusting, insufficient data management tools. Stakeholders of this business process reengineering strategy include teachers, the director of education, degree programme manager, and the payroll department.


Their To-Be system will be enabled through the use of Microsoft Access. Initially, the process began with the restructuring and redefining phase, which is one of the aspects of redesign principles - Lose Wait,Orchestrate, Mass Customize, Synchronize.


Lose Wait - By automating the process, managers were able to reduce the cycle time through the use of Tonni600 as an information system. There were also able to apply the Synchronize aspect by combining both technological part and manual part of the process, since the process itself was not fully automated.


The case study also shows examples of changing of information around the process through Digitizing and Propagating. For example, they were able to store relevant information through the web and java applets. Since the HRM system is now online, information was easily propagated through the relevant stakeholders.


As a whole the new process improved and was generally a better system than the old one. Especially in terms of efficiency and data availability, the university was able to take advantage of the upcoming IT advances to promote and improve their current HRM system.

W12 - Process Redesign (3) and Implementation

Source / Reference:


1) Week 12 Lecture slides-Lecture 12: Process Redesign (3) and Implementation


2) Business Process Re-Engineering (Case study of CISCO)
 http://www.articlesbase.com/strategic-planning-articles/business-process-re-engineering-case-study-of-cisco-4332955.html




Subject: Lecture 12- Process Redesign and Implementation
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Response: 


To reiterate there are 10 major tactics to Resdesign principles and implementation:
        1st Group (Restructure and Reconfiguring)
1. Lose Wait
2. Orchestrate
3. Mass-Customize
4. Synchronize
        2nd Group (Informating the process)
5. Digitize and Propagate
6. Vitrify
7. Sensitize
       3rd Group (Minding the process)
8. Analyse and Synthesize
9. Collect, connect, create
10. Personalize


This blog will focus more on the 2nd group - Informating the Process. These three aspects is basically changing the old process (e.g. paper based accounting) and turning into digital information (e.g. how SAP provides accouting solutions). These three aspects depict how information technology can be applied to turn the AS-IS as into a TO-BE process.


Digitize and Propagate refers to the digitization of data (ex: paper to database) and the "pushing out" of that data to the relevant users. Issues such as information flow, data collection, and data propagation relates to this principle.


The Vitrify principle refers to transparency of the process. The goal of this principle is to let users "see more". Examples that relate to this principle are on-demand tracking, reporting, and analysis. For example, the case of Logistics companies, they can vitrify their process by making the delivery process available to customers online perhaps through RFID (Radio frequency identification) and GPS (Global Positioning system).


The Sensitize principle refers to the implementation of sensors and loops to receive feedback so that the process will continuously operate. This principles also refers to the implementation of these sensors so that the process will easily adapt to change and different input's, more like change management in that perspective.


In the case of Cisco, they implemented Business Process Reegineering and based on conclusions, it was relatively successful. The writer mentions "Information technology assisted CISCO in achieving the required back up and several cost reduction even though a bulk of the cost reduction was done by the re-engineered process". This brings the significance of these 3 principles even more. By Digitizing and propagating their business process through the use of IT, Cisco was able to somewhat reduce their costs. Opportunities such as automated invoicing and online payment options were available after the application of BPR. These are one of the perks of BPR since it helps open new doors for the company.

Week 10 - Redesign Principles and tactics

Source / Reference:

1) El Sawy's Redesign Principles and Tactics

http://higheredbcs.wiley.com/legacy/college/turban/0471229679/add_text/ch09/el_sawy.pdf

2) Week 10 Lecture slides- Redesign Principles (1)

Subject: 

Lecture 10 - Redesign Principles and Tactics

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Response: 

The three generic ways for redesigning as described in the lecture can also be represented in the image below.

The reengineering principles are divided into 3 main principles around processes :

1. Restructuring and reconfiguring

2. Changing Information flows

3. Changing Knowledge management

Looking into the restructuring and reconfiguring part, there are 4 enumerated parts :

1. Lose Wait

2. Orchestrate

3. Mass Customize

4. Synchronize

Just looking into the restructuring and reconfiguring of process, the first principle is to Lose Wait. This is to reduce the waiting time inside a process. For example, the few methods for obtaining lose wait as mentioned in the lecture are concurrency, closed-loop, Not gating main process, Continuous flow, and Upstream relives Downstream. These are relatively somewhat jargon to those without any redesign processes background. 


 A couple of simple examples to illustrate these four points would better help the understanding of the principles. Given a small restaurant, an application of concurrency - lose wait- would be applicable to the cooking process. Rather than one person completing one dish from start to finish, the process would include having multiple people work on different stages of  a dish then complete it concurrently. Orchestrate in this scenario would be the finding the optimal cooked ingredients (to provide zero inventory), to reduce the whole process making it efficient through the use of commissary. Mass Customize can be applied in this scenario through Dynamic Customization. That is catering to the customers needs and what they want directly, made to order perhaps. Synchronization is one of the more straight forward tactics, it can be implemented directly from production to delivery.

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Comment on Eleanor's blog week 10:

http://eleanorlyy-1230.blogspot.com/2012/03/week-10-redesign-principles-and-tactics.html

The example for applying the business process reengineering principles within health care in Canada was very concrete and informative. Not many examples exists that encompasses all 10 traits/ tactics of the total 3 main redesign principles. Furthermore, I think Eleanor did a good job of explaining how the processes worked. Some limitations include the synergy or the outlook of the redesign of the health care as a whole. Yes, I think the one-by-one explanation and application of the processes somewhat worked but I could not picture it as a whole redesign, thus it lacks in the completeness aspect.