3e2a1b56-dafb-454d-87ad-86adea3e7b86

Chapter 4 Process design 111
4
5
6
For the passport office, described above, the total work content of all the activities that make up the total task
of checking, processing and issuing a passport is, on average, 30 minutes. How many people will be needed to
meet demand?
The same passport office has a ‘clear desk’ policy that means that all desks must be clear of work by the end of
the day. How many applications should be loaded onto the process in the morning in order to ensure that every
one is completed and desks are clear by the end of the day? (Assume a 7.5-hour (450-minute) working day.)
Visit a drive-through quick-service restaurant and observe the operation for half an hour. You will probably need
a stop watch to collect the relevant timing information. Consider the following questions.
(a) Where are the bottlenecks in the service (in other words, what seems to take the longest time)?
(b) How would you measure the efficiency of the process?
(c) What appear to be the key design principles that govern the effectiveness of this process?
(d) Using Little’s law, how long would the queue have to be before you think it would be not worth joining
the queue?
Selected further reading
Chopra, S., Anupindi, R., Deshmukh, S.D., Van Mieghem, J.A.
and Zemel, E. (2006) Managing Business Process Flows,
Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River NJ. An excellent, although
mathematical, approach to process design in general.
Hammer, M. (1990) Reengineering work: don’t automate,
obliterate, Harvard Business Review, July–August. This is the
paper that launched the whole idea of business processes
and process management in general to a wider managerial
audience. Slightly dated but worth reading.
Hopp, W.J. and Spearman, M.L. (2001) Factory Physics, 2nd
edn, McGraw-Hill. Very technical so don’t bother with it
if you aren’t prepared to get into the maths. However,
there is some fascinating analysis, especially concerning
Little’s law.
Smith, H. and Fingar, P. (2003) Business Process Management:
The Third Wave, Meghan-Kiffer Press, Tampa, Fla.
A popular book on process management from a BPR
perspective.
Useful web sites
www.bpmi.org Site of the Business Process Management
Initiative. Some good resources including papers and articles.
www.bptrends.com News site for trends in business process
management generally. Some interesting articles.
www.bls.gov/oes/ US Department of Labor employment
statistics.
www.fedee.com/hrtrends Federation of European Employers
guide to employment and job trends in Europe.
www.iienet.org The American Institute of Industrial
Engineers site. This is an important professional body for
process design and related topics.
www.opsman.org Lots of useful stuff.
www.waria.com A Workflow and Reengineering Association
web site. Some useful topics.
Now that you have finished reading this chapter, why not visit MyOMLab at
www.myomlab.com where you’ll find more learning resources to help you
make the most of your studies and get a better grade?