Process Modeling and its Benefits

The process modelling or business process modelling provides a graphical visualization of business processes (Milani et al. 2016). The business processes are the internal or external tasks of an organization that is either executed automatically or with the intervention of the human. The process modelling allows the organizations to identify the gaps in the organizational processes and provide an acute element for effective management of business processes. The process models can be categorized into two parts called, as-is process and to-be process (Chang 2016). The business process re-engineering is the activity of regenerating core business processes with the objective of increasing the quality of product, productivity and reducing the cost of operations. The As-Is model is created to capture the current processes of an organization.

The report is created based on the information of Swinburne Logistics Group. The organization is one of the leading integrated logistic provider in the region of Asia Pacific. The report has included the assumptions made during process model creation along with the issues in the current process. The report also provide a detailed general description of business process redesigning. The diagrams have been created based on the information provided and assumptions made through experiences.

The biggest assumption made during the business process reengineering is that the warehouse department works through the paper based information. Each of the information shared among the internal employees of the warehouse of Swinburne Logistics Group is done manually. That is why the organization is facing problem with keeping the warehouse data updated. Often the error data in the warehouse is creating issues in managing the delivery schedule. Often the organization face issues with colliding delivery time and the whole process gets disrupted. It has often happened that Swinburne Logistics is delivering a lot more frequently in a day than usual. This leads to decrease in quality of service.

It is also assumed that the organization is willing to implement a new system that can connect all the components. Each of the departments will be connected to the core of the system and the system will have a database to store the data instead of paper.

Arranging Delivery Time Manually: The Floor Supervisor of Swinburne Logistics is responsible for managing the delivery time of the goods. The Swinburne Logistics has operation managers who sign contracts with the clients. Contracts are signed, Swinburne Logistics collects the information of the goods to be shipped and along with the destination information. As the organization has a lot of clients and delivers too many goods to the destination, it is quite hectic to check the stored delivery time and find a suitable one manually. Often the organization face issues with colliding delivery time and the whole process gets disrupted. It has often happened that Swinburne Logistics is delivering a lot more frequently in a day than usual. This leads to decrease in quality of service. Often the organization has no driver to assign the service. Another issue that happens in Swinburne Logistics is that there are often no slot left for delivering an urgent service. The operators have to re-arrange the whole shipment schedule just to make sure that everything is done properly.

The Case of Swinburne Logistics Group

The organization can implement a new and advanced scheduling process that will reduce the error to approximately zero. There will be free slots for adding new emergency deliveries. Moreover, the floor assistant and operators will have more time to focus on their core responsibilities.

Paper Based Information Sharing: Though the organization has invested in the Smart Job Distributor information system, many stakeholders like the operators and floor supervisor have to carry out their work based on the paper work. The paper based works are very prone to error and often lead to wrong process execution. The paper based information cannot be copied easily and can be used for a relatively small amount of time.  

After eliminating this issue, Swinburne Logistics Group can easily prevent data errors in the warehouse operations. The time required for sharing information is reduced to a significant less amount.

Recognition and Communication of Requirement for Change: For small organizations, identifying the process requirements is a very easy task. However, for big organizations that has complex processes, the requirement gathering is the most critical and vital task. The process has always two sides, one is employees and the other is management (Chang 2016). Therefore, the identified requirements should be able to satisfy both the management and employees. This way management will think that their investment will not be wasted. In addition to that the employees will not be afraid of their job security. The analyst who collects the requirement must prepare a convincing document to the organizational stakeholders so that proposed process reengineering is accepted. The planning for process reengineering should involve different department leaders and the created plan must be very comprehensive (Esbenshade, Vidal, Fascilla and Ono 2016). The management will act the middle man between the team and employees. They will convey the benefits of the proposed changes in the process to the employees and other key stakeholders. Risk of failure is very high in process reengineering and if the management is not cooperative with the team then projects actually becomes a failure. Some people may experience negative impact from the process reengineering. The management must find new ways to make change work for those people too.

Put Together a Team of Skilled Personnel: Like any other project, the process reengineering must be completed by experienced and skilled team. Each of the member of the team will be responsible for carrying out different responsibilities. Each of them must be able to handle the tasks assigned to them skillfully. The teams are generally consisting of senior manager, operation manager, reengineering exert. In order to taken the most vital decisions, a higher management executive of the organization must only be allowed to take decisions (Huang et al. 2015). The senior manager is responsible for supervising the whole process reengineering activity. Sometimes, the business process reengineering team may not have a senior manager included within it. In such cases, the team will communicate with the organization management to make every simple changes. The team will have a person who knows the existing processes very well. The operation manager is included into the team because he/she can identify whether the new processes is able to implement the input/output of the process. If the operation manager guide the process reengineering task then they can contribute to make the new process follow the objective of the organization (Bertolini et al. 2015). This is extremely vital because it will ensure that new process can contribute to growth and profit of the business while maintaining organization policy. Interference of operation manager reduces the possibility of process reengineering failure.

Assumptions Made During Process Reengineering

Identifying the Inefficient Processes and Defining the KPI: If the team is ready to start working on the project, the project manager will create a list of key performance indicators or KPI. It is essential to create the key performance indicators before the team completes reengineering the processes. If the KPIs are not defined then team may find that created new process does not include some factors of the process (Alles et al. 2018). The idea behind the process reengineering is to improve the current process not create a whole new process. Based on the process the team is optimizing, the KPIs are created. The key performance indicators can be mean time to repair, support ticket closure rate, application dev and cycle time.

Business Process Reengineering and KPI Comparison: Once the requirement gathering and analysis process is complete, the team can start working on actual reengineering the processes. The changes will be implemented in a small scale in the initial stage (Grant 2016). The new processes will be matched with the created KPIs to ensure that new process is compatible with the organization objectives.

Conclusion:

From the above study, it can be concluded that the process reengineering can allow Swinburne Logistics Group to improve the existing manual processes. The new process may include new technologies that can automate the back office processes. Based on Swinburne Logistics Group’s description, the organization needs new processes that can fill the gaps of old processes while maintaining the objectives of the processes. The report has properly described the elements of the business process model. The report did not highlight how the processes can be improved. However, it showed which the key issues are in the current process. Each of the steps discussed in the business process reengineering activity refers to some vital factors in process change.

References:

Alles, M., Brennan, G., Kogan, A. and Vasarhelyi, M.A., 2018. Continuous monitoring of business process controls: A pilot implementation of a continuous auditing system at Siemens. In Continuous Auditing: Theory and Application (pp. 219-246). Emerald Publishing Limited.

Bertolini, M., Bevilacqua, M., Ciarapica, F.E. and Postacchini, L., 2015. Business process reengineering of drugs storage and distribution: A case study. International Journal of Procurement Management, 8(1/2), pp.44-65.

Chang, J.F., 2016. Business process management systems: strategy and implementation. Auerbach Publications.

Esbenshade, J., Vidal, M., Fascilla, G. and Ono, M., 2016. Customer-driven management models for choiceless clientele? Business process reengineering in a California welfare agency. Work, employment and society, 30(1), pp.77-96.

Grant, D., 2016. Business analysis techniques in business reengineering. Business Process Management Journal, 22(1), pp.75-88.

Huang, S.Y., Lee, C.H., Chiu, A.A. and Yen, D.C., 2015. How business process reengineering affects information technology investment and employee performance under different performance measurement. Information Systems Frontiers, 17(5), pp.1133-1144.

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