Assignment: Designing processes for products and services
There are literally thousands of processes that routinely take place within large organizations. Many of these processes could stand to be improved, so as to maximize their efficiency and effectiveness. These improvements would lessen operating costs, make it easier to forecast revenues, and decrease the degree of variability in outcomes. While this sounds simple, designing a process that is cost effective, sustainable, reliable, and integrates quality into the finished product or service is not an easy undertaking. There are many hard and soft factors to consider. Legal factors such as hiring laws are considered hard factors and those are obvious. On the other hand, factors such as culture and ethics would fall under soft factors, but they cannot be ignored. If a company's processes offend a culture or they are seen as unethical then this can result in bad press and other negative connotations that are undesirable. Also, when designing a process you typically do not have 100% of the data needed, or the data has variance. Take forecasted demand for example. There is a margin of error around the forecast, which is nothing more than an estimate of future demand, and this margin of error has to be considered in the process design. You do not want to design your process to handle only the forecasted demand and not have any slack in case the forecast is lower than actual demand, for if you do then potential profits are lost. In this chapter you will get the opportunity to develop process design skills.
Learning Outcomes
o Document the requirements for an operational product / service plan for an organization.
o Analyze the risks to an organization resulting from a poorly formulated product / service plan.
o Examine considerations for sustainability of a product /service plan.
o Prepare an operational product / service plan emphasizing efficiency and suggested changes to improve operational outcomes.
Task
Answer the following end of chapter problems from the textbook:
• Prepare a service blueprint for each of these banking transactions:
o Make a savings deposit using a teller
o Apply for a home equity loan
• Construct a list of steps for making a cash withdrawal from an automated teller machine (ATM). Assume that the process begins at the ATM with your bank card in hand. Then, identify the potential failure points (i.e., where problems might arise in the process). For each failure point, state one potential problem.
• Consider the following system:
Determine the probability that the system will operate under each of these conditions:
o The system as shown.
o Each system component has a backup with a probability of .90 and a switch that is 100 percent reliable.
o Backups with .90 probability and a switch that is 99 percent reliable.
• A system consists of three identical components. In order for the system to perform as intended, all of the components must perform. Each has the same probability of performance. If the system is to have a .92 probability of performing, what is the minimum probability of performing needed by each of the individual components?
• One of the industrial robots designed by a leading producer of servomechanisms has four major components. Components' reliabilities are .98, .95, .94, and .90. All of the components must function in order for the robot to operate effectively.
o Compute the reliability of the robot.
o Designers want to improve the reliability by adding a backup component. Due to space limitations, only one backup can be added. The backup for any component will have the same reliability as the unit for which it is the backup. Which component should get the backup in order to achieve the highest reliability?
o If one backup with a reliability of .92 can be added to any one of the main components, which component should get it to obtain the highest overall reliability?
• Hoping to increase the chances of reaching a performance goal, the director of a research project has assigned three separate research teams the same task. The director estimates that the team probabilities are .9, .8, and .7 for successfully completing the task in the allotted time. Assuming that the teams work independently, what is the probability that the task will not be completed in time?
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
o The answer should be typed, using Times New Roman font (size 12), double spaced, with one-inch margins on all sides.
o The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
o Also include a reference page. The Citations and references must follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.