Week 13 - Redesign Supply Chain Process

Source / Reference:
1. Supply Chain Cost-Cutting Strategies
http://www.percon.com/whitepapers/Supply_Chain_Cost-Cutting_Strategies.pdf


Subject:
How redesign supply chain process can be carried out

Response:
A traditional supply chain has several tiers of enterprise types that enable the flow of products and services. For example, in a manufacturing supply chain, there are sourcing suppliers who produce components that are then assembled by manufacturers. It is known as buy side. Then manufacturer distributes their products through wholesale distributors, who in turn make them available to resellers and retailers, who sell them to business customers. It is called the sell side or distribution side.

There are two types of PIPs (the partner interface process): Open PIPs and closed PIPs.

The PIP approach for redesigning supply chain processes for e-business has a two-part sequence:

PIP is designed at the supply chain level, and then

Enterprise processes are aligned with and redesigned around the PIP.

There are five steps for PIP approach:

Step .1 Scoping the supply Chain Process

It involves understanding how the supply chain process fits into the supply chain process cluster and identifying partner scenarios for supply chain process. Final one is identifying sub-processes within supply chain process

Step .2 Identifying Partner Interface Processes within the Supply Chain Process

Identify the sub-processes that comprise the supply chain process. The partner types such as manufacturers and resellers that are associated with each sub-process can also be identified.

Step .3 Designing the To Be e-Business Partner Interface Processes

After identifying the boundaries of the main PIPs around the supply chain, it is possible to design the PIPs and specify them in detail. Designing an e-Business PIP around a supply chain process involves identifying roles, role interaction, creating PIP model and identifying the roles of the partners who perform the activities that make up a PIP.

Step .4 Estimating and Articulating Expected Impacts Due to PIPs

It can be done by running what-if analysis using the process modeling software, financial impact analysis (cost savings) and operational impact analysis (time savings)

Step .5 Agreeing on and Disseminating the Partner Interface Process Specification

Specification document disseminated to all who will implement the process and should be shared with all partner.

These are what I have learnt from lecture 13.

Week 12 - Process Redesign + Implementation

Source / Reference:
1. Best practices in process redesign
http://is.tm.tue.nl/staff/hreijers/H.A.%20Reijers%20Bestanden/BPRpractices.pdf
2. An implementation guide for Process Redesign
http://www.cgg.gov.in/publicationdownloads/CGG%20Process%20Redesign.pdf

Subject:
What are the major issues of implementation for BPR

Response:
As there are so many blogs have mentioned about how BPR can be implemented and what benefits can be brought to organizations, there are some issues may be ignored. Therefore, I would like to discuss about it. BPR implementation involves change of organization structures. Therefore, human Resources problems are the key issues of implementation and these are listed as followed.

• Fear and anxiety

Nature of job and path of career may change after the implementation. Their position may be eliminated so they will lose their jobs.

• Employees are resistance to change

They are get used to work in a traditional way. Changes required them to learn the new way or work again which is time-consuming.

• Difficulty of continue normal duty while undergoing change.

During the implementation, the complexity of their job may increase because procedures of their job may be different from precious one. Therefore, it will increase the error of their work.

• Erosion of human capital

Employee will think that their special skill and knowledge which are valuable for them is eroding due to the implementation of BPR.

There are also other factors affect the success of implementation:

• Top management support

It is important for the project because all resources are got from them.

• Level of risk

There may be some risks that cause the delay or fail of project.

• User acceptance

The requirements may be out of user’s expectation. If the user does not accept, the project is fail.

• Management of process

Applying incentives can encourage project members to work more.

Week 11 - Redesign Principle and Tactics II

Source / Reference:

1. El Sawy's Redesign Principles and Tactics (2001)

http://higheredbcs.wiley.com/legacy/college/turban/0471229679/add_text/ch09/el_sawy.pdf

2. Role of Information technology Implementation of Business Process Reengineering

http://www.anterron.com/cgi-bin/white_papers/docs/Role_of_IT_in_BPR.pdf

3. A. Albadvi (2003), "Customer Relationship Management (CRM)"

http://sharif.edu/~albadvi/Crmses4.pdf

Subject: 
How can processes be minded with Redesign Principles and Tactics?

Response:

The following three principles are minding the process which change knowledge management around the process:
 Principle 8:         Analyze and Synthesize

 Principle 9:         Connect, Collect & Create

 Principle 10:       Personalize

Principle 8, “Analyze and Synthesize” aims at creating more value through server tactics. Moreover, it reinforces the knowledge of users including customers.

Principle 9, “Connect, Collect and Create” connects the systems first and then find out the ways to collect the knowledge. At last, it generates a space to share the knowledge among all participants. It emphasizes the reuse of the knowledge directly and instantly.

Principle 10, "Personalize" means that adds the preference and habits of each participant to the process. For example, each participant may have an individual profile. With analyzing the behaviors of them, we can find out the preferences of them.

Further more, some findings can be found out from the concept of knowledge management. Knowledge management treats the knowledge as asset of company which can help individuals and groups to share valuable organizational insights to reduce redundant work and training time for new employees. Also, it can adapt to changing environments and markets. These are the similarities of objectives between process redesign and knowledge management.

Here is a real life example of company - Timberland
http://shop.timberland.com/category/index.jsp?categoryId=4238694

Timberland has redesigned the business process of designing the boots which allows customers to tailor-made their shoes instead of doing by designers of company.  First, customers first choose a particular style of their shoes.Then, they will customize the shoes and enter their size records.
  
Analyze and Synthesize
Timberland can collect the data about the popular boots style by generating sales statistics and collect opinions from their customers. Then, they can make the supply decision accordingly and make new designs of the shoes by referencing to these information.
Tactics used:

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

Connect, Collect & Create
Since Timberland has to customized and ordered online, the company can have routes to access their customers' preferences and information, and build a well-defined knowledge repositories to maintain long-term relationship with their customers.
Tactics used:

• Define procedures to collect this knowledge

Personalize
This is obviously the most important advantage of all. The customization allows customers to indicate their own preferences by designing own boots. Besides, the company can also keep track of their customers' information, to analyze their purchasing behaviors and to promote products that they may be interested in.
Tactics used:

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

Week9 - BPR Modeling and Analysis

Sources/References:
1) "How Do I Choose the Best Business Process Reengineering Software?"
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-do-i-choose-the-best-business-process-reengineering-software.htm
2) "Software Application Reengineering"
http://www.symbyo.com/Custom-Software-Application-Development/Software-Application-Reengineering.aspx

Subject:
How to select the best Business Process Reengineering software?

Response: 
Business process can be used to determine performance of an operation. When a company carries out business process reengineering, it restructures its process to operate more efficiently. To achieve this purpose, business process reengineering software is needed which can help an organization to optimize its performance. However, there are so many BPR software to choose from. What criteria should be consider? Data analysis, user friendliness, cost and quality are the criteria users can consider.

Data analysis
Recorded data can be easily anaylzed after BPR software is used. A clear assessment of an operation can be provided with creating tables and charts so lapses can be found out easily which may hinder productivity. Therefore, a good BPR software can allow users to record and analyze data of organizations so they can see how information flow through different departments and find out where the time is wasted.

User friendliness
Saving time is a common goal of business process reengineering. Communications between steps of a process should be fast and use less time. Therefore, a good BPR software should be easy to learn and use so it not only can  improve the communication between the process but also employees.

Cost and quality
There are many factors affecting the cost like the complexity of software and reputation of companies. Also, cost always is proportional to quality. Therefore, users need to find out the trade off between these factors.

In conclusion, the best BPR software should be able to find out the way to save time, easy to use and cost effectiveness.

Here is one of ease to use software

Week 8 – Scoping an enterprise process

Source/Reference
1. "Redesigning Enterprise Processes for e-business" by EL SAWY, Omar A. 2001
http://zonecours.hec.ca/documents/H2011-P6-2647625.El-SawyChapter4.pdf

Subject: 
Why scoping of process is needed and its importance?


Respones:
To carry out business process redesign with BPR software, there are three key phases which are

1. Scoping the process
2. Modeling, analysis, and redesign of the process
3. Planning process integration

Particularly, I would like to talk about the phase of scoping the process. In the phase of scoping the process, it is consist of several activities and this article why they are important:

Operationalize process performance targets

It removes unclear goals and makes them become concrete to allow BPR project team documenting and communicating clearly. Also, it removes the conflicts between process performance targets and prioritizes them.

Define process boundaries, identify key process issues

Reengineering needs much of time and effort. It can prevent wasting time and effort in irrelative areas. Also, it provides BPR team pointers for collecting data.


Understand best practices and define initial visions

It can let the BPR project team has a shared understanding of best practices to provide better ideas. Also, it is useful to provide energy to BPR project because of preliminary visions.

Familiarize participants with BPR software

If someone does not familiar with the common language, it affects the schedule of the project. Also, much troublesome is exist when there is a problem during the development because it cost more expedient if there are further changes.

Outline data collection plan and collect baseline data

It can save time and collect less unnecessary data because data collection needs time and effort of many people. Also, it can ease the implementation and improve the quality of process redesign outcomes.

Finally, process scoping report is a deliverable for feedback and report purposes.

W4 - Strategic Alliance Mode

Source / Reference:
1)  "Strategic Alignment: Leverage Information Technology for transforming organization" by J C Henderson and N Venkartraman 1993http://search.proquest.com/docview/26252741/134A6C8B53F19A4F606/1?accountid=16210
2)  "Strategic Alignment: Analysis of Perspectives” (2006) by P Coleman and R Papp
http://sais.aisnet.org/2006/Coleman-SAIS2006-paper.pdf

Subject: 
In Lect 4 - Which alignment strategy in SAM model is the best? and why? 

Response:1st paragraph: [ Put Your conclusion or  abstract or main opinion]  

I think no alignment strategy is the best because different industries have different nature. Therefore, we should apply the suitable alignment strategy to particular industries to achieve the “best” one.2nd paragraph:  [Elaborate and support your points ]To find the “best” alignment strategy, we should understand what four domains are. Both business and IT have strategy and infrastructure domains. We can know what they are about from the following graph.

To use the strategic alignment model correctly, we should identify the strongest and weakest domain of the company. It needs to develop communication and increase understanding of weaker domains. Then we can understand relationship between domains when change in strategy occurs.

Different alignment strategies have different focus so there is no “best” one fit for all industries. For example, strategy execution is focus on improve business processes through changing business infrastructure. Technology transformation is focus on aligning IT strategy and IT infrastructure. Service level is focus on enabling business infrastructure by fitting IT infrastructure to IT strategy. And competitive potential focus on enabling new business opportunities by IT.