讲解 OPSMGT 258 Business Process Design Assignment 1

OPSMGT 258 Business Process Design

Assignment 1

Assignment and Submission Instructions

This assignment is due on Wednesday, April 2nd at 11:59pm.

•   The assignment is marked out of 100 and is worth 10% of the coursework mark.

•   The assignment should be completed individually.

•   The use of ChatGPT or any other AI tool is prohibited. By submitting, you agree to the UoA academic honesty principles and practices outlined here:

https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/teaching-learning/academic-integrity.html. Any violation of academic integrity will nullify your scores for the assignment.

•   The assignment has a total of 4 Questions. You must answer all parts of all questions.

•    Explain all answers. For all calculations show full workings.

•   Your submission should consist of a single MS WORD file.

•   Your document is in essence a business report and as such must be formatted   according to the template provided on Canvas | Assignments. Five marks will be awarded for satisfying these business report requirements. If you find that your  Microsoft WORD formatting skills are not sufficient, please refer to the basic training information in “Tech Guides”.

•   The assignment has to be submitted electronically via Canvas. The file to be submitted must be named “Assign1_258_yourUPI” .

•    Late assignments will receive a 10 mark penalty per day late if you have not been granted an extension of time. Final deadline for accepting late submissions is 48 hours after the deadline (with a maximum loss of 20 marks).

•    Please make sure to round your numerical answers appropriately.

Professional Report Writing

Well written, correctly referenced, and properly formatted reports are essential in all business environments. Hence, it is crucial that you can apply professional formatting to a MSWORD document and for this assignment by using the formatting template provided on Canvas. [5 marks]

Question 1 Total for Question 1: 35 marks

Read the following case description of a process at the National University, then answer the questions based on evidence from the case.

Case: A process

Each year, the National University processes about 370,000 invoices for supplies at their central administration office. About 75% of invoices are sent by suppliers electronically straight into the accounts payable system; those that are not received electronically are manually entered by administrative staff into the accounts payable system. On average, it  takes 5 minutes to enter a non-electronic invoice into the system. Once an invoice is in the system, the system can automatically determine whether an invoice amounts to at most $150 or is over.

Roughly 15% of invoices are for amounts of at most $150; such invoices are pre- approved and administrative staff process these for payment on average after a 30 minute wait. However, before processing any invoice over $150 for payment, administrative staff must obtain approval from the departmental budget manager who originally authorised the purchase; they write out the details of this invoice (takes on average 1 minute per invoice) and email it to the departmental budget manager concerned. These managers process invoices twice a day, which results in an average wait time of 2 hours. They check the receipt-status information and record the outcome (i.e., whether or not goods were received), which takes between 4-6 minutes per invoice before emailing the processed invoice back to the administrative staff, who check their email inbox regularly, resulting in a 1 hour average wait before further processing.

The approved invoices are then pooled with the pre-approved invoices and sent to payment. The payment processing takes administrative staff on average 4 minutes per invoice. However, in cases where the goods have not been received (e.g., invoice not approved by the budget manager, etc.), administrative staff instead complete a form. letter (takes 2 minutes to complete) to include with the unpaid invoice as it is returned to the supplier; this happens 10% of the time at the payment step.

a)  Use IBM WebSphere to develop an ‘AS-IS’ process model for the process at the

National University. Your process model should be in the ‘Free-Form. Layout,’ should show an appropriate process name, and where the information is available, display task duration and wait times, and decision points should show the ‘Decision Percentage Labels.’ Insert the picture of your process model into your WORD document on a landscape page for submission.                             [25 marks]

b)  Calculate the Theoretical and the Actual Flow Time for the ‘AS-IS’ process at the

National University . Show your full workings in table format within your report using a copy of the table template in the WORD file “Assignment – Flowtime Calculations  Template” provided on Canvas.       [5 marks]

c)  Calculate the capacity of the administrative staff and the budget manager for

processing invoices. There are 50 administrative staff that process invoices, and 10 budget managers. Both the administrative staff and the budget managers work for 50 weeks a year, and 8 hours each work day. However, each budget manager only spends up to 2 hours a day processing invoices. Show your full workings in table format within your report using a copy of the table template in the WORD file “Assignment – Capacity Calculations Template” provided on Canvas.   [5 marks]

Question 2 Total for Question 2: 35 marks

Part A

Consider the following process for manufacturing clothes used by Zara. Blanks stored in a raw material inventory (RMI) are cut and then sewn, and are then put in a finished goods inventory (FGI). The cutting and sewing tasks use different resources. There is no buffer between cutting and sewing. Different employees work on the cutting and sewing process.

i)         What is the capacity of this process? Justify your answer. [1 mark]

ii)        What is the cycle time at the non-bottleneck task? How appropriate workings. [1 mark]

iii)       Are any tasks starved or blocked? If so, then why and for how long?  [2 marks]

iv)       Assume the system is operating at capacity. What proportion of the time is the operator at the ‘Cutting’ task actually working? What about at the ‘Sewing’ task? Show appropriate workings. [3 marks]

v)        Is this a make-to-stock or make-to-order process? Justify your answer. [2 marks]

vi)       What is the theoretical flow time of this process? What additional information would you need to calculate the actual flow time? Show appropriate workings and justify your answer. [3 marks]

vii)      Assume the system is operating at capacity, and the actual flow time is 3 hours.

What is the Work in Process of the entire process (including all tasks and inventories)? Show appropriate workings. [3 marks]

Part B

Due to recent layoffs, the capacity at sewing has been reduced, as depicted below.

i)         What is the capacity of this process? Justify your answer. [1 mark]

ii)        Are any tasks starved or blocked? If so, then why and for how long? [2 marks]

iii)       Assume the system is operating at capacity. What proportion of the time is the

operator at the ‘Cutting’ task actually working? What about at the ‘Sewing’ task? Show appropriate workings. [3 marks]

iv)       What is the theoretical flow time of this process? Show appropriate workings. [2 marks]

Suppose a buffer that can hold at most 200 shirts is added between “Cutting” and “Sewing” . Also suppose “Cutting” runs two 8-hour shifts (i.e., 16 hours a day), “Sewing” runs three 8-hour shifts (i.e., 24 hours a day), and “Sewing” will start working after the first item at “Cutting” is finished (i.e., there is no waiting time in “Sewing” at the beginning of the day).

v)        What is the maximum level of WIP in the buffer over the course of a day? Show appropriate workings. [4 marks]

vi)       Draw a graph plotting the level of WIP in the buffer against the time of day for 24 hours. [5 marks]

vii)      Calculate the average level of WIP over 24 hours. Show appropriate workings. [3 marks]

Question 3 Total for Question 3: 10 marks

In class, we discussed how “Sometimes optimising individual parts, or just one activity of the process, may inadvertently be damaging the end (overall) result.”

a)  Explain with an example the meaning of this statement why this is true, especially in the context of traditional functional organisations. [5 marks]

b)  Describe how to address the problem of this statement in the context of traditional functional organisations. [5 marks]

Question 4 Total for Question 4: 15 marks

A local restaurant would like to improve its Yelp rating. To do this, they have analysed the negative feedback left in use reviews, and developed the following table using the data collected.

a)  The restaurant would like to choose one or two categories of complaints to focus on addressing. Which of the charts and diagrams we discussed in class would you recommend they use to help them answer this question? Explain your answer. [5 marks]

b)  Is there any additional information you think would be useful in deciding which complaints to focus on? Explain your answer. [5 marks]

c)  Based on their analysis of the complaints, the restaurant manager has decided they would like to reduce complaints by “increasing the number of meals delivered to customers in 20 minutes or less by improving employee training” . Is this a good way of framing the problem? Why or why not? [5 marks]