Hi,
There are several types of operational cases that you may have:
1) Operational math problems. (e.g. Should we increase the speed of the elevator or just buy a second one? How should we reduce the queues? How should we increase the output of a factory?).
Structuring:
- Usually, you have to look at the process (i.e. value chain). Even the most complicated systems have the inflows and outflows. Remember that the outflow is driven by the demand
The key concepts that you have to learn:
- Capacity and utilization (both machine and people)
- Reducing the demand to fit the capacity / increasing the volumes to cover fixed costs
- Cycle time, Throughput time, Little's Law
- How the does lowest cycle time influence the production? (Lead time = cycle time of the slowest process)
- How can we mitigate the bottlenecks with low cycle time? (Buffer, Parallel process, speeding up)
2) Cost cutting cases
Structuring:
- What is the cost composition and what are the biggest costs
- Benchmarking of the biggest costs to find the improvement potential
- Process improvements to meet the benchmarks
- Costs and benefits of the proposed initiatives
The key concepts that you have to learn:
- Internal / external benchmarking
- Idle time
- Core processes (usually are optimized) and the supporting processes (usually are cut)
- Math structures (Frequency of operations * time per operation)
- Other useful structures (e.g. people - process - technology)
I have not seen many of them available online. Feel free to reach me for further help with these cases.
Best
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