Read through “The Action Response Applications Processing Unit (ARAPU)” case study and complete the case templates answering the following questions:
1. Identify what performance objectives should the ARAPU be trying to achieve?
2. What is wrong with the current ARAPU process?
To answer this question:
a) map the application processes (steps, time and resources) and calculate the work content and number of staff;
b) Calculate the number of employees theoretically required to run the process;
c) Calculate throughput time using Little’s Law;
d) Calculate the degree of balance and where the bottlenecks are.
3. Based on your analysis (Q 1 and 2), suggest how could the ARAPU process be improved. Suggest how the process could be redesigned.
Preparation Guidelines:
Use the templates provided to help guide your analysis. You may use more slides, but please limit the analysis to a maximum of 10 slides (including the front cover).
For this case I am expecting you to use your analysis in answering questions 1 and 2 to help frame realistic options for how to improve the process.
Process improvement suggestions will include re-balancing the workload within the process, but can also include quite radical process redesign, such as merging stages / eliminating stages. You can suggest any redesign as long as you justify how you would do this and what the difficulties may be.
If you do not have full information in the case then you can use your judgement i.e. 1 or 2 secretaries (for example).
Ensure that all group member names are on the front cover.
Fully explain and justify your analysis.
1. For the secretary stage you can either ignore this stage from the calculations or choose 1 or 2 and a work content of 5-10 minutes.
2. For the committee stage you can ignore this stage for the purposes of completing the calculations for question 2, but consider their role when answering Q3 and suggesting improvements to the process.
3. When working out work content and number of staff (2a, slide 3) the aim is to determine the average work content for a typical application. This means at the assessors stage you have 100 recycled applications (x) and 300 new applications (y) to calculate a weighted average. ONLY 300 applications then pass through to the committee etc.
4. When calculating cycle time (2b, slide 4) forecasted demand is 300 NOT 400 as you dont include the 100 recycled which should not be happening.
5. When calculating balancing and bottlenecks (2d, slide 6) the load now takes into consideration the actual numbers of applications being worked on i.e. 400 (300 new and 100 recycled) for the stages up to and including the assessor stage , then only 300 applications pass through to the remainder of the process.
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