Week 9 - Redesigned Process (2) 

Reference:

1. Leslie Behnke & Forrest Breyfogl (2004). Focusing the Power of Six Sigma in the Healthcare
    Insurance Industry: Lowering Medical Costs while Improving Patient Service and Outcomes.
    Retrieved April 11, 2011

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Three remaining re-enginneering principles

     There are several strategies for minding the processes are also introduced via Maxtor and the measures to improve or redesign the processes. Furthermore, the 3 principles of changing knowledge management around the process are also introduced. In the last part of this journal, I would like to use 3 examples to explain some principles. They are CIGNA, TOSHIBA and UPS.

Principle #8 - Analyze and Synthesize

-  Enhance the interactive analysis & synthesis capabilities around a process to generate value added. This
    principle is mostly applied to business like agents that have to make recommendation to customers by    
    summarizing and analyzing the information. 

Common Tactics:

1)      Provide what-if capabilities to analyze decision choices

2)      Provide slice and dice data analysis capabilities that detect patterns

3)      Provide intelligent integration capabilities across multiple information sources

Principle #9 - Connect, Collect & Create

-   Capture intelligent and reusable knowledge around the process through all who touch it. One of the
    examples is the creation of Knowledge Repository through collecting the answer in the repetitive
    queries/FAQ. Therefore, the most suitable answer can be collectively derived from these knowledge
    creation processes.

Common Tactics:

1)      Define procedures to collect the knowledge

2)      Create physical/ virtual spaces for storing the knowledge

Principle #10 – Personalize

-  Make the process intimate with the preferences & habits of participants. By repeating execution of a
   process, this will built up a knowledge repository of customers’ preference. Base on the information
   gathered and generated from the repository, the process can offer more personalized services to
   customers.

Common Tactics:

1)      Learn preferences of customers and doers of the process through profiling

2)      Insert business rules that are triggered by personal profiles

3)      Use collaborative filtering techniques

4)      Keep track of personal process execution habits

Reflection

Case Study on TOSHIBA & UPS

     The material I found is about the Principle #2: Orchestrate. There is a common tactic called “Insourcing”. United Parcel Service (UPS) is an American courier company which performed logistics operations for Toshiba. UPS would deliver Toshiba computer equipment from the factory.  Toshiba were criticized that there was a long time delay from the pickup for repair to delivery of the fixed product. Therefore, to avoid the unnecessary timely transport to and from the Toshiba factory, UPS employees are trained to repair the products on UPS premises. 

     In the other words, TOSHIBA has in-sourced the maintenance and repairs logistics process to UPS. As a result, both parties are benefited a lot from insourcing. For TOSHIBA, their service time is shorter than before and reputation & company images are improved gradually. For UPS, it alsoreduces its transportation time and cost and not just focus on delivery but also maintenance skills which provides more knowledge to the workers and enhance the diversity of the company.

Case Study on CIGNA (part2)

Again, I would like to apply all principles learnt in last lecture on CIGNA case study. 

Brief Introduction

 CIGNA is a leading provider of insurance and related financial services throughout the United States and the world. Between 1989 and 1993, CIGNA introduced business reengineering into its organization and saved more than $100 million.

 Analysis

Principle	Explanation	Applied?
Principle #0 - Streamline the process	CIGNA has applied this principle. In the case, it reduced 14 hand-offs to zero. It is because the content of hand-offs can be placed on the network. The staff with authorized rights can see the notices. Also, both the cycle time and the working hours were reduced because the employees can share information together on the network. Therefore, they can save the time of searching information. BPR made the business process and the information systems to be consolidating.	Yes
Principle #1 - Lose wait	CIGNA has changed to team-based management, each team serve different districts in US and every team member can manage several cases concurrently.	Yes
Principle #2 - Orchestrate	The CIO and his management team brought in a new CIGNA Reengineering director from an outside consultancy that focused on dramatic operational improvement, bringing the organization’s cost structures in line with changed market conditions. In this case, it used “Outsourcing” tactic.	Yes
Principle # 3 - Mass-customize	CIGNA has utilized a national database to share the data and information; therefore, staff can have flexible time to access the information.	Yes
Principle # 4 – Synchronize	CIGNA has provided a common process platform as it applied Local Area Network (LAN) that linked up 1000-person unit of the company where they can work together.	Yes
Principle # 5 - Digitize and propagate	CIGNA obviously satisfies this principle because there are totally 3 hours for a Corporate Medical Presale Process instead of 6 hours because of the digitization of process and paperless information.	Yes
Principle # 6 – Vitrify	The authorized staffs can track the information by accessing the database.	Yes
Principle # 7 – Sensitize	The article I read doesn't mention anything about how to collect customer feedbacks. Instead, it has mentioned customer service process in CIGNA International that delivered a 50% improvement in customer satisfaction. Therefore, I think it has applied.	Not sure
Principle #8 - Analyze and Synthesize	Six Sigma team in CIGNA used their brand new skills and tools to “slice and dice” the data a number of ways and identify more precisely the highest risk groups and their respective top causal factors so as to recommend to professional case manager. As a result, costs went down but member satisfaction went up. Besides, it also construct "what if" scenarios to see how customers’ plan choices will affect their out-of-pocket costs, based on projected utilization	Yes
Principle #9 - Connect, Collect & Create	CIGNA has automated its underwriting process and also provided users with quick access to additional knowledge resources, including contact details of experts for different facets of the process	Yes
Principle #10 – Personalize	CIGNA let consumers customize their health benefit selections, what they pay for them and the way they customize their everyday Internet purchases	Yes