What are typical operations cases (aka process improvement case) ?

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. Even the most complicated systems have the inflows and outflows

The key concepts that you have to learn:

• Capacity and utilization (both machine and people)
• 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)

Feel free to reach me for further help with these cases.

3) Bottleneck cases (e.g. Huge write-offs in the meat store or bottleneck on the bridge)

Structuring:

You draw a value chain and go through it to find a bottleneck.

E.g. for the meat write-offs it will be:

• Supplier issues (packaging, meat quality, warehousing)
• Transportation (Length, fridges)
• Store (Refrigerators in the warehouse, in-store fridges, demand for meet)

Best