Week 14 - Redesign Supply Chain Processes

Week 14 - Redesign Supply Chain Processes

References:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-rose2/index.html
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1189596


In this lecture, we were taught about the redesign of supply chain processes. A "supply chain" is defined as the flow of materials, information, money and services from raw material suppliers through factories and warehouses to the end customers. Towards the end, we also touched on the concept of Partner Interface Processes. Here, we are mostly concerned with Inter-Organisational Misalignments, which can broadly be categorised in three types:

1. Plug-and-Play E-Process Misalignments
2. Information Coordination Misalignments
3. Knowledge Sharing Misalignments

Plug-and-Play E-Process Misalignments

An e-process is a process where there is an established internet communication link between two computer applications. There exists an e-process misalignment if the interfaces of the applications are different and that the interface dialogue does not trigger the correct process sequence at the business level. This causes problems and hinders the effectiveness of the process.

Information Coordination Misalignments

This happens when the information from two related sources contain mis-matches. These misalignments are caused by non-automated or non-standard interfaces at the sources, resulting in difficulties in synchronising information. Therefore the supply chain process is delayed and the inventory level is raised and process time is lengthened.

Knowledge Sharing Misalignments

"Knowledge sharing" among enterprises in a supply chain means the sharing of:

• Market knowledge and trends
• Knowledge for joint market programmes
• expertise around product and service design
• Collaborative demand forecasting

When there are misalignments:

• they hinder the intelligent management of knowledge around supply chain processes
• they limit the management's ability to improve performance of the supply chain
• they require more qualitative information than normal transactional information

Partner Interface Processes (PIPs)

A PIP is a process in which standard protocols are shared between enterprises for standardisation purposes in order to reduce misalignments.

There are two types of PIPs, open PIPs or closed PIPs. With open PIPs, standards are shared across an industry with reusable designs; whereas closed PIPs have standards that are shared between a number of partners.

Rosetta Net is an example of PIPs.

Week 13 - Process Redesign (3) and Implementation

Week 13 - Process Redesign (3) and Implementation

References:
http://projectmanagement.ittoolbox.com/documents/successful-bpr-implementation-strategy-13101
http://www.bus.iastate.edu/nilakant/MIS538/Readings/Integrating%20BPR%20with%20ISD.pdf

This week we picked up process redesign from where we left off last time at the workflow software supported process transformation stage. We have now finished the last step of the process redesign phase which is the Planning Process Integration step. We also covered the next phase after Process Redesign, Implementation and Organisational Transformation.

In this step, we investigated the options for IT integration for BPR. Starting from 1990, primitive custom applications were developed to support the growing demand of e-business. These IT platforms have since come a long way in their evolution to the state-of-the-art XML-based Process Integration Suites that they are today. In between the two ends of the evolution, they have gone through the stages of being simple workflow engines, integrated enterprise applications and specialised e-process automation software. Let's have a look at each of those stages.

Custom Application Development

A stage where custom developed applications were starting to be integrated into IT architectures. Customisation is still common presently as a result of the growing IT differences propagated by the legacy systems between organisations.

Nowadays however, the trend has been to emphasise core functionality of systems rather than integration.

The Workflow Engine Operation

A business process model is generated by software, where all information, databases, activities, authorisation, data routing are maintained to facilitate automated business process execution.

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)

This was where Business-to-Business software was used to manage the process flow and interactions across supply chain partners. Using EAI effectively had the advantage of integrating without having to make major changes to the current infrastructure. It created an ordered framework to an organisation as it served as the central coordinator between different business stations.

Note that EAI was differed from middleware in that it focused on the integration of both business-level processes and data as opposed to just data. EAI included reusing as well as distributing business processes and data. EAI also allowed integration of applications that did not understand each other.

Specialised E-Process Automation Software

The different departments within an enterprise were all connected by an intranet network, which was itself connected to the supplier portal and logistics through Internet network. This meant that all employees of the enterprise could order supplies directly online and keep track of payments.

XML-based Process Integration Suites for E-Business

This is the latest incarnation of IT integration technology. XML marks up a document with user-defined tags which enables simple organisation of data in computer or human readable formats and improved communications between different customised applications or enterprises.

Apart from that, XML has the capability to make plug-and-play seamless connectivity between processes of various enterprises.

We finished the Redesign Phase here and moved onto the next phase of BPR.

Implementation of Organisational Transformation - Change Management

The concept of change management is really a structured approach from current to desired state, while avoiding the inevitable user resistance to changes. This phase is mainly concerned with the people's side of issues and the goal is to use structured techniques to transition through the changes. Most of those techniques are based on Lewin's theory of unfreezing, changing and refreezing.

Unfreezing - Managers move employees from their comfort zones to the next stage

Changing - Transition time needed depends on the extent of change required

Refreezing - Stability at the desired state may be temporary since business typically involves rapid changes

HR Problems

• Fear and anxiety
• Resistance to changes
• Hard to work properly while undergoing changes
• Perceived erosion of human capital
• Employees like to keep their old skills and think of changing as a disposal of their old skills

Remedial Actions

• Establish sense of urgency
• Form powerful guiding coalition
• Create and communicate vision
• Empower others to act on vision
• Plan for and create short-term wins
• Consolidate improvements and produce more changes
• Institutionalise new approaches

Week 12 - Redesign Principles and Tactics (2) + Guest Lecture

Week 12 - Redesign Principles and Tactics (2) + Guest Lecture

References:
http://www.businessprocessreengineering.org/
http://www.mendeley.com/research/critical-review-existing-bpr-methodologies-need-holistic-approach/


This week's lecture continued with the the rest of of redesign principles, which we started looking at last week. In addition, we had a guest lecture on BPR by Mr. Y. F. Yuk from the Government Efficiency Unit.

Mind

There are three principles that are based on the minding of processes:

Principle 8 - Analyse and Synthesise

Enhance the interactive analysis and synthesis capabilities around a process to generate value.

• Provide "what-if" capabilities to analyse decision options
• Provide "slice and dice" data analysis capabilities that detect patterns
• Provide intelligent integration capabilities across multiple information sources

Principle 9 - Connect, Collect and Create

Capture intelligent and reusable knowledge around the process through all who touch it.

• Define procedures to collect this knowledge - Create expertise maps and build knowledge repositories that can be reused to enhance performance of process
• Create physical/virtual spaces for storing this knowledge - Develop FAQ databases and create knowledge sharing spaces for interactive dialogues around the process.

Principle 10 - Personalise

Make the process intimate with the preferences and habits of participants.

• Learn preferences of customers and doers of the process through profiling
• Insert business rules that are triggered by personal profiles
• Use collaborative filtering techniques
• Keep track of personal process execution habits

Guest Lecture

 We were introduced to the BPR work done by the government by first learning the differences in business goals between the public and private sectors.

In a nutshell, the objectives of the government are much more complicated than those of the profit-making organisations in the private sector. Therefore, the best practices from the private sector are sometimes required to be filtered to suit the public sector environment.

It was emphasised strongly during the lecture that BPR is more than just automating existing processes, rather, it should eliminate unnecessary tasks in processes. The Public Service Centres and the E-Stamp Services were given as examples of BPR in the government.

The keys to success of their BPR work were said to be:

• Top Management Sponsorship
• Strategic Alignment
• Compelling Business Case for Change
• Proven Methodology
• Effective Change Management
• Line Ownership
• Reengineering Team Composition

It was certainly interesting for me to know the huge backing and support they receive from top management which in my opinion make a successful BPR a lot more possible, despite the added challenges of operating in a public sector environment.

Week 11 - Redesign Principles and Tactics (1)

Week 11 - Redesign Principles and Tactics (1)

References:
http://www.slideshare.net/msq2004/bpr-03-process-re-design
http://www.anterron.com/cgi-bin/white_papers/docs/Role_of_IT_in_BPR.pdf


This week we were given an insight into the general principles and tactics of redesigning business processes. However, they are meant to be GENERAL only, because as far as redesigning is concerned, there is really no limit as to number of specific principles that can be developed since the world is always changing. In other words, as long as you are creative enough, you can always invent a new BPR principle!

Before we get into the subject of this post, there are a few assumptions that have to be made:

• We maximise the VALUE ADDING content of a process;
• We carefully manage the NON-VALUE ADDING activities;
• We minimise everything else that is NOT NECESSARY.

Principle 0 - Streamline

This is basically what our assumptions have stated. In a nutshell, this principle re-iterates the importance of eliminating anything that is unnecessary and combine similar activities to reduce complexity. Note that business processes are redesigned by changing their topology of flows, which are either physical products, information or knowledge.

Therefore, it follows that there are three generic ways to redesign business processes:

1. Restructure and reconfigure processes
2. Informate processes by changing information flows around them
3. Mind processes by changing the knowledge management around them

Restructure

There are four principles based on the restructuring of processes:

Principle 1 - Lose Wait

Reduce waiting time in process links to create value.

• Concurrency - redesign time-sequential activities to be executed in parallel, or concurrently
• Closed-Loop - create closed-loop teams for quicker flexible interaction, minimising the need to pass information between different departments
• Not Gating Main Processes - do not allow non-core activities to delay core activities
• Continuous Flow - implement real-time rather than batch processing
• Upstream Relieves Downstream - Modify upstream practices to relieve bottlenecks downstream of the production line

Principle 2 - Orchestrate

Let the swiftest and most able enterprise execute.

• Partnering - Partner a process with another enterprise
• Outsourcing - Outsource a process to another enterprise
• In-Sourcing - In-source a process back into the enterprise
• Routing through an Intermediary - Route the process through an intermediary

Principle 3 - Mass-Customise

Flex the process for any time, any place, any way.

• Flexing Time - Flexible access by expanding the time window for the process
• Flexing Space - Flexible access by creating more options for the physical space in which the process is executed
• Modularity - Create modular process platforms
• Dynamic Customisation - Enable dynamic customisation of products

Principle 4 - Synchronise

Synchronise the physical and virtual parts of the process.

• Match Offerings - Match the offerings on the physical and virtual parts of the channel
• Common Process Platforms - Create common process platforms for physical and electronic processes
• Track Movement - Track the movement of physical products electronically

Informate

There are three principles based on the informating of processes:

Principle 5 - Digitise and Propagate

Capture information digitally at the source and propagate it throughout the process.

• Digitise at Source - Shift data entry to customers and digitise it
• Make the Process Paperless - Make the process as paperless as possible and as early as possible
• Make Information Accessible Upstream and Downstream - Make information easily accessible upstream and downstream to those who need it during the process
• Shrink the Distance between Information and Decision - Processes can be executed much faster by redesigning the information capture and access around a process, so that information needed for decisions is directly accessible

Principle 6 - Vitrify

Provide glass-like visibility through fresher and richer information about process statuses.

• On-Demand Information Tracking - Provide on-demand tracking information for customers of the process
• On-the-Fly Reporting and Analysis - Provide reporting facilities for on-the-fly analysis
• Standard Partner Interface - Design standard partner interface processes for seamless exchange of information

Principle 7 - Sensitise

Fit the process with sensors and feedback loops to prompt actions.

• Process Dysfunction Loops - Build in customer feedback loops to detect process dysfunctions
• Monitor Environmental Changes - Enable software smarts to trigger quick business reflexes, or attach environmental probes to the process to monitor changes

Week 10 - Redesign Process (2)

Week 10 - Redesign Processes (2)

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holosofx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workflow

This week we explored the concept of redesigning processes by treating a process like a model with various distinct components. We were introduced to the Holosofx Workbench software as an aid to help analyse processes and draw flow-charts.

Generally speaking, a redesign can be broken down into a four phases: identification a process, an in-depth analysis of the current process (i.e. as-is), selection of a new design (i.e. to-be) and comprehensive testing of the new design.

During any of the aforementioned phases, the use of computer software as a tool is essential and therefore highly encouraged. The Holosofx Workbench is an example of such software and it has five essential aspects that constitute the effective modelling of a process:

1. Structural elements of business process flow
2. Organisational resource links to business process flow
3. Rules of graphical connection
4. Methods of conditional concatenation of process parts
5. Process performance measurement

The sequence of workflow is the essence of any process and a flow-chart is its graphical representation. Flow-charts are also used in Holosofx to generate the models of processes.

A flow chart consists of different shapes that are linked together by arrowed lines, which indicate the "flow" of actions. Each shape has its own meaning and use in a flow-chart and must be used in strict accordance. For instance, a rectangle with rounded corners represents a basic, low-level action, or task, in a process, whereas a diamond means a point of decision where a choice is selected in order for the "flow" to continue. The diagram below is a very simple flow-chart of a process. 

To analysis the as-is model, we start by identifying process problems through modelling, after which, we look at all the possible scenarios or cases individually and generate tables of different data that help determine the cases cycle and process times, as well as cases total costs. The main goal of BPR is to improve on those indicative results.

After redesigning, generate another set of tables for the to-be model and compare the results with those of the as-is's to verify the effectiveness of the redesign. Simulations of different what-if scenarios can be conducted at this point to test the new model's capacity and its ability to handle extreme situations.

We keep improving the redesign until it has met the desirable performance!

Week 4 - Strategic Alignment Model

Sources / References:

1) "Strategic Alignment: Leverage Information Technology for Transforming Organization" by J. C. Henderson and N. Venkartraman 1993

http://search.proquest.com/docview/26252741/134A6C8B53F19A4F606/1?accountid=16210

2) "Strategic Alignment: A Model for Organizational Transformation via Information Technology" by J. C. Henderson and N. Venkartraman 1990

http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/49184/strategicalignme90hend.pdf

 

 

Subject:

Which alignment strategy in SAM model is the best? Why?

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Response:

The Strategic Alignment Model (SAM) is the conceptual framework that an organisation adopts which describes the inter-connections between the business and IT aspects of the organisation. It is the operational formula that a company or enterprise chooses to follow with regards to both the quality and extent of IT integration and support it has within the bounds of its business activities.

The diagram above is the SAM depicted in graphical form. As can be seen, there are four inter-related elements (domains), which constitute the structure of the model. These four domains are Business Strategy, Organisation Infrastructure, IT Strategy, and IT Infrastructure respectively. The "perspective" of the model refers to the relative amount of importance the model places on each domain.

Broadly speaking, depending on whether Business Strategy or IT Strategy is the focus, or common domain anchor, there are four dominant perspectives:

Business Strategy -> Organisation Infrastructure -> IT Infrastructure

This popular perspective places Business Strategy as the focus, and uses it to dictate Organisation Infrastructure, which in turn is used to dictate IT Infrastructure. This is the traditional approach of hierarchical strategic management and implies that IT is an expense which comes after both Business Strategy and Organisation Infrastructure. Thus, IT Infrastructure is designed so that it facilitates business decisions.

Business Strategy -> IT Strategy -> IT Infrastructure

This perspective, unlike the one above, is not limited by Organisation Infrastructure and it seeks to identify the best IT competencies. This takes advantage of the emerging IT and utilises IT as a means to assist business operations by having a strategic plan specifically for IT.

IT Strategy -> IT Infrastructure -> Organisation Infrastructure

This perspective is related to the strategic fit between IT Strategy and IT Infrastructure with corresponding impact on Organisation Infrastructure. Here, the role of Business Strategy is very small and indirect. This ensures that the use of IT resources is effective and responsive to the fast-changing customer demands.

IT Strategy -> Business Strategy -> Organisation Infrastructure

This perspective puts IT Strategy as the focus and adjusts Business Strategy to cater for the new emerging IT. This allows the growth of business scope and identifies the best set of strategic options for Business Strategy and the resulting Organisation Infrastructure.

It can be seen that every perspective mentioned above has its own virtues. In my opinion, while they are vastly different concepts, there is really no optimum perspective here. I believe that different perspectives will suit different organisations, or different leadership styles, or different customers. Timing may also be critical to the effectiveness of a perspective as the economic climate changes with time. One may have to find out the most suitable perspective for a specific business by experience and the method of trial and error.