Week 13 : Supply Chain BPR

Reference :

1. http://www.lda-us.com/Articles/AME_SupplyChainRedesign.pdf

Content :

Advanced Sterilization Products had conducted supply chain processes redesign due to the disconnection between purchasing, manufacturing, demand planning, logistics, design and quality. The turnover rate of the inventory was very high, the rate was four. Some warning to the company had been found by conducting activity based costing, which were excessive material handling expanse, excessive manufacturing leadtimes, non-valued added activities. Therefore, the aim of the project was improving the product performance.

First, the company had established a project team to conduct the project. The team was comprised of advisory committee, project sponsor, project lead, consultant, Kanban team, supplier qualify team, core team, Q&R study and reliability testing. Difference components worked on different part. For example, Knowledge Transfer Group Limited, the consultant, provided ASP with structure and technical expertise to the project.

Then, the team generated a schedule to achieve the goal of the project.  There was a pre-analysis phase to collect data, agree on meeting formats and timetables, and identify customer requirements. The state two was data and information analysis. In this phrase, it conducted cross-functional training, validated opportunities and benefits, valued map the physical and information flow in the Supply Chain, and prepared a reduction. For the phrase one and two, it spent 3 months to finish. Then, proposing redesign, making business case and implementation were conducted. They aimed to design the To-Be process and implement in the actual working environment.

In the figure c, the scopes of some processes were shown in the table, for example, the scope of JIT Deliveries was the ID and deliver top 80% of components to manufacturing floor. Also, the table listed out the objectives, techniques, deliverables and the results of each processes. Next KTG was consulted in order to gather more expert view for the redesign.

The article showed the min/max inventory process with flash points and disconnected communication loops and inflated lead-times. The figure showed that there were 35 steps in the incoming delivery process, which was very time-consuming and non-valued added. To improve these problems, the company reduced staging area, removed excess product from the WIP area, reduced excess WIP product containers and relabeled remaining containers. Also, the company had removed the non-value added activities in order to make the whole supply chain clearer, faster and smoother. The new processes included supplier selection, parts certification, quality and reliability study, application test.

To summarize, the redesign of the supply chain in the company was very successful. The company achieved improvements in design and development producibility, quality, reporting and data collection, and materials.

Week 12 : Lewin’s Three-stage Change Process

Reference :
1. http://www.lmcuk.com/management-tool/lewins-3-stage-model
2. http://www.scribd.com/doc/21556594/Change-Management-Lewin%E2%80%99s-3-Step-Model

Content :

Lewin’s Three-stage Change Process is a model about the change of a business involves a move from a stable state to another stable state through a transition. The model consists of unfreeze state, change state and refreeze state.

Unfreeze

This state helps managers or stakeholders to understand the change is required and let the employees comfort the change to the next state. If they do not first understand there is a need to change or the detail about the change, company may innovate in difficulties. In order to reduce the resistance of change, mangers should provide sufficient information. Having a detailed description about the change with employees may be a good process.

Change

The old process or system is replaced by the new one in this state.  Employees need to adapt the new working procedure, environment. So, good leadership and support are needed in order to achieve the goal of the company. Otherwise, the goals may be lowered or even though become failure.

Refreeze

This is the latest state in the model. The goal of this state is to establish a new, stable state and make sure their employees comfort with their new working environment.

Limitation

In the real world, the environment of the company faced is actually changing continuously. It may violate the concept of the model since the model assumes to change a business process from a stable state to another stable state. If the condition is relative stable, then the model is still useful. Otherwise, company should adopt other method to redesign her process.