Week 14 - Redesign Supply Chain Processes

Source / Reference:
1)"Product architecture assessment: a tool to link product, process, and supply chain design decisions" by 
Sebastian K. Fixson, Research in Journal of operations management [0272-6963] Fixson, Sebastian yr:2005 vol:23 iss:3-4 pg:345 -369 
http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.lb.polyu.edu.hk/science/article/pii/S027269630400110X


Subject:
Link business process, product and supply chain design decisions together


Motivation:


In the last lecture, Redesign Supply Chain Processes, the concepts of supply chain and redesigning process of supply chain are taught. Since supply chain is cross-organizational in nature, misalignments occur in e-process, information and knowledge. Therefore, redesigning the partner interface process (PIP) is a need to reduce misalignments in the supply chain process. However, the focus of reengineering the PIP is on the collaboration among enterprises, which may be rather passive in terms of the whole business process and product/service. How to link the business process, product and supply chain design decisions together in order to assess the relationship and have a better, more precise redesign is the motivation of this blog. 


Introduction
For many manufacturing firms, heightened competition has brought back into focus the value of considering manufacturing concerns during product design, and to overlap formerly sequential design processes. More recently, the competition has intensified for many firms through increased demand heterogeneity and shorter product life cycles. Formerly large mass markets have fractured into smaller niche markets demanding higher levels of product variety while competitors are introducing new products in shorter intervals. To respond to these pressures, many firms have put customization of mass produced products at the center of their attention.
A concept of “concurrent enterprising’ is addressed to describe the future direction of mass customization, to achieve an alliance of customers, products, processes, and logistics by means of parallelity, integration, standardization, teamwork, and many others, for delivering an increasing product variety to satisfy diverse customer needs while maintaining near mass production efficiency. A comprehensive product architecture assessment methodology can serve as the hub to link these decisions with each other.


Product architecture assessment
In order to achieve the ultimate goal to assess the impact of product architecture decisions on decisions in the domains of product, process, and supply chain, what is needed then is a method to determine where in between these extremes – modular and integral – a particular design is located in the space of possible function–component mappings, how two or more mappings compare to each other with respect to their locations in this space. The product architecture assessment framework combines the comprehensiveness of the conceptual models with the operationalizability of the engineering models and lays the foundation for mathematical models to be applied to individual aspects.


Dimension 1: function–component allocation scheme
To build on the definition that a characteristic feature of product architecture is the way in which functions are allocated to components requires a mechanism that determines and measures this dimension reliably. In other words, all three pieces of the function–component allocation scheme need a rule-based procedure to ensure repeatable results of function, component and the allocation scheme.


Dimension 2: interface characteristics
Products can exhibit different degrees of being coupled, depending on the product life cycle phase. The interface measurement needs to be conducted on a disaggregated level to allow investigation of the individual effects. To make the dimension interface measurable, the information are grouped into three categories: type, reversibility and standardization. In each category, the corresponding interface characteristic is assessed individually. Like the function–component allocation, the interface assessment investigates the characteristics of the interfaces only on the determined hierarchy level.


Link all things together: product architecture maps
Together with the function–component allocation data and the interface information completes the description of the product architecture, adding the information for all three interface dimensions to the function–component allocation map results in the product architecture map. These product architecture maps show in their x–y plane how the functions are allocated to the components. Independent from that, and independent of each other, the different interface dimensions are shown along the vertical axis (z). These product architecture maps serve as a graphic representation of the complete product architecture description. They allow quick visual references of similarities and differences of the analyzed product architectures. 

Product architecture change in the FCA scheme

Product architecture coordinates design decisions across process and product domains

Conclusion
Product architecture assessment is a multi-dimensional descriptive product architecture framework. This framework integrates insights from literature streams on new product development, operations management, and supply chain management. This framework can serve multiple purposes in management and research.
In practical, more information and linkage among the three aspects: process, product and supply chain are visualized through this assessment to assist in making decision. 

Week 13 - Process Redesign (3) and Implementation

Source / Reference:
1)"Pattern-based reasoning for rapid redesign: a proactive approach " by Li, Simon ; Chen, Li, Research in Engineering Design, 2010, Vol.21(1), pp.25-42
http://www.springerlink.com.ezproxy.lb.polyu.edu.hk/content/k523937104546118/


Subject:
Further development of Rapid Redesign model: a proactive approach


Motivation:

Refer to my previous blog: Other model of process redesign: Model-based Rapid Redesign, I further investigate more on his topic and I found another article that is written by the same author, which is a further development of the rapid design model. In the successive article, a proactive approach, Pattern-based reasoning for rapid redesign is discussed. This blog is to briefly introduce this new approach, compare it with the previous one and observe what have been improved.


Introduction
In the original approach - Pattern-based reasoning for rapid redesign, the decomposition process for redesign is not activated until the presence of a redesign request. This prior work represents a reactive approach where a new set of decomposition patterns should be generated in accordance with a different redesign request input.
In the new proactive approach, the decomposition patterns capturing generic decomposed structures of a given design model are created in advance and stored in a design library before any redesign request emerges. These pre-generated patterns are able to address any upcoming redesign request without further decomposition procedures in redesign. This proactive approach is developed in a new framework of pattern based reasoning that is built on the mechanism “case  pattern  strategy”. Two methodological components, Proactive Redesign Decomposition and Redesign Condition Analysis, are introduced in the article.


Proactive approach
The pattern-based reasoning mechanism discussed in previous blog is treated as a knowledge base to support the development of the rapid redesign methodology. Particularly, redesign cases and scenarios support the formation of pattern solutions for any redesign problems represented by DDM. Then, redesign strategies provide a finite range of tactics that help to systematically develop a detailed redesign roadmap for any redesign scenario. There are two components for the proactive redesign approach: Proactive Redesign Decomposition and Redesign Condition Analysis.

Proactive redesign decomposition
The development of Proactive Redesign Decomposition is based on the two-phase decomposition method. The first phase of this method, termed dependency analysis, is applied such that the scattered ‘‘1’’ elements in the original DDM get close to one another to form clusters. For most of complex problems in practice, the banded diagonal matrix will be obtained, which indicates the existence of interactions between the formed clusters. After obtaining the banded diagonal matrix, the second phase, termed matrix partitioning, is invoked. In this phase, three decomposition criteria are required in order to generate decomposition solutions: number of blocks, size limit of each block, and size limit of interaction parts.
The pattern complexity metric is a relative measure that estimates the potential design (computing) effort associated with a model-specific pattern. The block size balance is measured via the SD of the block sizes. Both of these values are used to analyze and refine the generated set of decomposition solutions, thus finally forming the model-specific pattern library


Redesign condition analysis
After obtaining the model-specific pattern library, the proactive redesign approach is ready to receive redesign requests, which activate the Redesign Condition Analysis. In this analysis, the incoming redesign requests are interpreted and translated into the corresponding target entities in the DDM. Then, the target entities are labeled in the model-specific patterns to form pattern solutions. Also, it is required to identify the redesign cases in order to select the proper root patterns from the model-specific pattern library. As a result, the applicable pattern solutions are identified to form the pattern selection space. At this point, the Redesign Planning Analysis can be applied to finally generate the redesign roadmap for the guidance of the redesign solution process.


Conclusion
The proactive redesign approach in this paper utilizes the two-phase decomposition method to generate decomposed structures of a given model to approximate its potential pattern solutions. Thus, as long as the existing model is kept the same, no further decomposition is required for new redesign requests. This proactive technique is applicable to existing design models that are subject to frequent yet minor design changes.
In short, the proactive redesign can generate a library that contains the best combination of process patterns that allowing certain changes. If we find some process sequence needed to be change, other patterns can be used to replace the existing method instantly since all the calculation is done preliminary. Compare with the previous approach, the proactive redesign can actually pay some efforts before the redesign is conducted. Also, once the computation is done, it can be reused in the future subject to no rapid change to the process dependency and sequence. 

Week 12 - Redesign Principles and Tactics (2)

Source / Reference:
1)"Model-based Rapid Redesign Using Decomposition Patterns" by Chen, Li ; Macwan, Ashish ; Li, Simon
J. Mech. Des.  -- March 2007 --  Volume 129,  Issue 3, 283
http://scitation.aip.org.ezproxy.lb.polyu.edu.hk/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=JMDEDB000129000003000283000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes




Subject:
Other model of process redesign: Model-based Rapid Redesign


Motivation:

We have been taught about the Five Phases BPR Methodologies and in the phase three - process redesign, there are many redesign principles and tactics, such as Streamline, Lose Wait, Orchestrate, Mass-customize, Synchronize, Digitize and Propagate, etc. These redesign tactics and principles mainly depend on human involvement. Is there any other ways to help redesigning process in a systematic approach which can be done by system? I have found an article that may explore the possibility of process redesign that can be assisted by some mathematical approaches. The article is “Model-based Rapid Redesign Using Decomposition Patterns”, although the title seems like talking about redesign, it is not fully related to redesign a process. However, the idea and methodology discussed may be useful for redesign a business process.


Introduction to Model-based Rapid Redesign Using Decomposition Patterns
The article presents a pattern-based decomposition methodology for rapid redesign to support design customization in agile manufacturing of evolutionary products. The methodology has three functional phases. The first phase, called design dependency analysis, systematizes and reorganizes the intrinsic coupling structure of a given existing design model that is represented using the design dependency matrix. The second phase, called redesign partitioning analysis, generates alternative redesign pattern solutions to form a solution selection space through a three-stage procedure. The third phase, called pattern selection analysis, finds an optimal redesign pattern solution that entails the least potential redesign effort. Each pattern solution identifies and delimits the portions of the design model that need to be recomputed, thus expediting the redesign solution process. In such a way, one can treat the re-computation of the entire model, which is a conventional and computation-expensive solution approach, only as the last resort to solve the redesign problem given.


1st phase: design dependency analysis
A general redesign problem is formulated as a constraint-based computational model that is composed of parameters and constraint functions. The parameters describe the physical constituents and/or behavioral properties of concern for a design. And the constraint functions define the design correlations and mappings between the parameters. In this context, the design dependency matrix (DDM), a mathematical incidence matrix, can be used to capture and convey the dependency information inherent in the design model. The DDM-assisted decomposition can be applied as an effective means for simplifying the design problems that are intractable in size and complexity.


2nd phase: redesign partitioning analysis
The goal of partitioning is to convert a diagonal matrix into possible pattern solutions, or rather, to identify which redesign decomposition patterns from the library and their redesign pattern solutions correspond to the diagonal matrix. Upon the concept of the partition point, the redesign partitioning analysis is developed to address the placement of partition points in order to generate all the applicable redesign pattern solutions from a diagonal matrix.


3rd phase: pattern selection analysis
To provide a means to evaluate alternative pattern solutions to find the optimal one, two matrix pattern metrics are derived to quantify the redesign effort entailed by any given redesign pattern solution: intensity and interdependency. The intensity metric is used to estimate the scale of redesign potentially involved in improving the deficient performance levels. Also, the interdependency metric is used to estimate the redesign propagation potentially induced due to coupling.

Conclusion
This model uses mathematical methodology to analysis the dependency among process and decomposes the process. Through this analysis, the partitioned process can be analyzed and redesigned to obtain the optimal process pattern.
We can apply this model in redesigning a business process. First we have to define the dependency of activities with a business process. Then we can build a design dependency matrix and follow the three phase methodology above. Finally, we can get the best possible redesigned process. However, the mentioned methodology has a greater improvement on complex process. If the process is rather simple, the model may not be very useful for redesigning since the dependency and sequence are non-changeable. 
If we can apply this model agilely with the redesign principles and tactics, a better process can then be redesigned.

Week 5 - BPR basic (1)

Source / Reference:
1) " Business process perspectives: Theoretical developments vs. real-world practice" by K. Vergidis , C.J. Turner, A. Tiwari 2008

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527308000029

Subject:

How real business treats the perspective of Business Process and how it affects the implementation of BPR

Motivation:

As taught in Lecture 5, basic and general ideas of BPR have been introduced including the definition, rationales and properties with case study. We have been taught on the power of BPR but what is the point of view on business process from real business and how does this kind of belief influences BPR? I am trying to discover more in real situation and practice through writing this blog.

Findings:

Vergidis, Turner and Tiwari had precisely contrasted and summarized the main findings of literature research and conducted a survey targeted within the service industry to investigate the practice regards to key aspects of business processes. Based on their finding (figure 1), 64% of the respondents were still in traditional departmental segmentation and only 24% were organizing their company around business processes. This finding indicates that the traditional point of view of organization (departments are built cross functionally) still dominating majority of business organization in service industry. As taught in the lecture, we know that original view of organization structure in rather hierarchical and this kind of structure is a preliminary barrier of business process reengineering. It is not surprising that the authors also pointed out that only one third of respondents stated that process knowledge is shared among the main process participants and this would result in insubstantial understanding and decentralized co-ordination in business process enactment.

Besides, the researchers found out that the industry uses different kinds of business process modeling techniques (fig.3) to help finding out what is the company doing in current status and then make changes to improve it. Several kinds of modeling techniques have been asked on the participants in the survey but the responses in quite discouraging. It seems that simple flowcharts and documentation is used rather than some “advanced” modeling skills such as Petri-nets. The reason behind this perhaps is because of the complexity of those advance techniques. This finding is contrasting with the academic view of modeling, and as simple flowchart (which is lacking of standards) is being used, business processes are not easy to model, analysis and redesign. Although the perspective of BP is sophisticated, real industry is reluctant to adopt it.

Conclusion:

Although the concept of business process is developed for years and the theory of it is well elaborated, it is not widely adopted in real practice. It may due complexity of using BP modeling and the need of reconstructing the organizational structure. Though, I am not totally agreed with the finding of the authors. First, the research is focused on service industry which is not reflecting the facts in a comprehensive way. Second, the research is conducted years ago and the development of BPR and BPM has gone a far way. However, the traditional structure of organization is obstructing the business to redesign their business process is obvious. In order to conduct BPR, the Leavitt Diamond must be considered while reengineering business, that is, we have to consider changing the organizational structure, adopting IT and equipping people with adequate skills.

Week 4 - Strategic Alliance Model

Source / Reference:
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: Analysis Of Perspectives" by P Coleman and R Papp 2006
http://sais.aisnet.org/2006/Coleman-SAIS2006-paper.pdf


Subject: 
Which alignment strategy in SAM model is the best? and why?


Response:
With regard to reference one, I agree with the authors that there is no one universal superior strategy. A strategy would not be strategic anymore if everyone adopt it. In my opinion, a business should base on the external environment and its internal structure and culture to make the best decision for strategic alignment, as different industry is facing various factors and each company a unique organization. The one who can capture the trend of market and business transformation and make its business and IT strategy align together to fit or even alter the market structure would finally success in the market.

Based on lecture four, we have been taught on four alignment strategy which are strategy execution, technology transformation, service level and competitive potential. While searching through the net, other kinds of perspective are found in Coleman and Papp's paper. Three of them are the same as proposed by Henderson and Venkartraman are the other five approaches are stated as follows:

Technology Potential

The pivot is information technology strategy and it is driven by business strategy. The information technology infrastructure is the impacted area in results. Information technology shows its value and contributes to the business’ final product or service. The relationship between the business and the customers is critical.



Organization IT Infrastructure
The next perspective is the organization information technology infrastructure perspective. The main driver is organization infrastructure, then passes through information technology infrastructure and finally impact the information technology strategy. Process improvements are made from information technology and the application of value to the business processes.

IT Infrastructure Strategy
It focuses on the improvement of information technology strategy based on the execution of rising and existing information technology infrastructures. Information technology infrastructure is the anchor and drives the information technology strategy to affect the business strategy.


IT Organization Infrastructure
IT infrastructure is the anchor again and being with organizational infrastructure as the pivot, affecting the business strategy. It is similar to IT infrastructure strategy but IT is the driving force and architect to carry out the visions and processes.


Organization Infrastructure Strategy
Business infrastructure is the anchor and business strategy as the pivot, finally IT strategy is the affected domain. It makes use of the abilities to develop and improve new products and services, affect strategy, and extend new relationships.

From the above perspectives, we can see that there are many other kinds of methods to align the business and IT, but in Coleman and Papp's paper, there is even fusion of strategies, which means the combination of two of the individual perspective stated above. They are shown as follows:

Organization strategy fusion
It is the combination of IT organization infrastructure and IT infrastructure strategy, which both has an impact on business strategy. It focuses on the two weak points (IT strategy and organization infrastructure), anchored by IT infrastructure. The basis of this fusion is technology driven and has a dominant role in the business.

Organization infrastructure fusion
It combines the service level and competitive potential. The anchor is IT strategy and impacts on organization infrastructure. IT infrastructure and business strategy are the weak points. This fusion is referring to the performance of IT and the organization’s decision of its value.

Information technology strategy fusion
This fusion is to combine organizational IT infrastructure and organizational infrastructure strategy. The weak points are business strategy and IT infrastructure and they are anchored by the organization infrastructure. The perspective explains to top management how IT must be developed to make effective strategic changes.

Information technology infrastructure fusion
The strategy execution combines with technology potential perspectives results in this fusion. The anchor is business strategy and the pivots are organization infrastructure and IT strategy. IT infrastructure is impacted. New and emerging IT architecture are focused to lead to the success in the business future.

As a conclusion, there are many ways to align the business and IT strategy and their infrastructure. Sometimes they may be confusing. But according to Coleman and Papp, they have done some research on those perspective that adopted by industry. As a business, we may take them as a reference to help us on deciding which perspective is suitable for our business.

Week 3 (Lecture 3) - The Strategic Framework and BPR for e-Business

Source / Reference:
1)Dusko Ursic, Sandra Anteric, and Matjaz Mulej. Business Process Re-engineering in Practice—An Example of A Medium-Sized Slovenian Company in Difficulties Systemic Practice and Action Research, Vol. 18, No. 1, February 2005
Retrieved from Springerlink: http://www.springerlink.com.ezproxy.lb.polyu.edu.hk/content/x2t114153p273153/
2)Knights, David; McCabe, Darren. When "life is but a dream": Obliterating politics through business process reengineering Human Relations51. 6 (Jun 1998): 761-798.
Retrieved from ProQuest: http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lb.polyu.edu.hk/docview/231475462/134B388216A6774FEF9/1?accountid=16210

Subject:
Importance of pressure groups and stakeholders that influencing BPR

Summary of lecture and motivation of this post:
In lecture 3, we have learnt about the strategic framework and BPR for e-Business. The strategic framework is based on three kinds of analysis techniques and tools in order to formulate the strategy. Among these three techniques, the environmental scanning tools including PEST and SWOT were introduced and discussed deeply and practices are made during class and tutorial lesson. However, the importance of pressure groups and stakeholders are explained in short that I would like to explore more on it.

Findings:
The first article, Business Process Re-engineering in Practice—An Example of A Medium-Sized Slovenian Company in Difficulties illustrates some criteria for selecting the management methods in order to bring an innovative business change management of a Slovenian mid-size company. One of the key issues that affect the re-design of business process is the ownership structure in Slovenia. It was found that 63% of cases are demonstrating an internal ownership, i.e. the employees of the companies have a transformed ownership in majority. Comparing with US, this kind of ownership structure is not common. Based on this unique feature, the company is not efficient due to considerable percentage of internal owners. Unprofessional conduct, vaguely defined situation and the policy of the investment are the threats posed by this kind of organizational structure and therefore, BPR project is not easy to conduct.

The company was facing many difficulties consists of low added value per employee, high business operation costs, low level of production and lacking invention of employee. One argument mentioned in the article, "BPR is efficient if the company's employees themselves suggest and implement measures taken in order to change the established methods of work and business. Here of special importance is their experience of many years and understanding of the essence of the company's processes." shows that employees are one of the key factors that can bring the BPR to success. Another reason that BPR implementation is difficult to conduct is because of the modification of business operation have a direct impact on the owners, management and the employees. If you know that your role may be eliminated after the process re-design, how would you be conscientiously involved in the project? The worst is rejecting such a project!

The second article, When "life is but a dream": Obliterating politics through business process reengineering emphasis on how organization politics affecting the BPR. With regards to the operation of BPR within a medium-sized UK bank, the author argued that BPR is likely to be comprised by and through political relations within and outside the organization, and then BPR will reconstitute organizational forms and norms in return.

The bank mentioned in the article wished to re-engineer its business process by cutting down the branches and expanding the central back office but it faced many kinds of challenges. One challenge that the top management encountered was the tension occurred between the branch and the back office staff. As the branch employees afraid of losing their jobs, they vented their frustrations against the back office. Another important stakeholder, who is the customer, also played an important role in the formulation of strategic framework. They got satisfaction from branch staff and they did not believe in back office staff so that they are not happy to hearing from cutting down the branches.


Conclusions:
The above case studies reflect that the pressure groups and stakeholders not only affecting the implementation of BPR, but also limiting the scope and direction of BPR project. In order to improve business competitiveness, sometimes we need to radically transform the traditionally defined structure of the organization to reduce the influence of stakeholders. This may take account of reducing the number of employees within the organization, or changing the customers' perspective on the business. Every decision made should be considered very carefully; otherwise the BPR would be a sink project. Both of the cases mentioned put many efforts in managing the pressure groups and stakeholders, and they are successful to complete the BPR project.