2012年4月16日 星期一

Lecture 13: Redesign Supply Chain Processes


References:
[1] Industrial products and services categorization standards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RosettaNet
[2] Message type and description of RoettaNet message
[3] Message type and description of SWIFT message
[4] Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
[5] Realising the Benefits of SWIFT for Corporates
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Recap of last lecture
This lecture mentioned misalignments in supply chain of industries may bring along impacts such as low efficiency, higher costs and incompatible data format.  The misalignments aspects included
  • Plug-and-play e-process
  • Information Coordination
  • Knowledge sharing

By increasing the alignment level of electronic interfaces, information flow and information sharing between these supply chain companies, overall beneficial effects would be bring to these companies.  Thus there 3 areas: production processes, manufacturing of new products/services and knowledge sharing, should be of main focus of improvement.  Value creation of the whole supply chain would then be achieved.

RosettaNet is one of the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) that offers open partner interface processes (PIP), it was joint by over 30 leading companies (totally 500 members, as in April, 2012[1]) within the IT industry. It provides unify guideline and electronic interfaces for the exchange of qualitative information rather than normal transactional/status information.  It based on XML to achieve standard among the global electronic/semiconductor industry.  Thus process implementers would be benefited by getting interactions and information useful for their sub-processes along different position in the supply chain.

Message type and description of RosettaNet [2]

The advantage of RosettaNet over EDI though, is that it provides real-time processing of business data for supply rather than some EDI’s batch-processing.  Moreover, RosettaNet is less complicated to operate when due with larger volume (because of it’s efficiency, specify to use in supply chain industries) than some general EDI, which is more suitable if company is doing an intermediate or even larger e-business.
traditional paper document transactions [6]
purchase order after implementing EDI [6]

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Topic: Brief overview of a similar EDI in the financial supply chain - SWIFT
There are many categorization standards used by business process interfaces.  Example are RosettaNet, SWIFT, ETIM and eCl@ss[1].  Here would review one of the standard interface – SWIFT.


Standard and mission
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is a financial messaging network that exchanges messages across banks.  Like RosettaNet, it is another quite popular interface and used by 239 banks in 15 countries [4].  Instead of using XML like in RosettaNet, it uses bank identifier codes (BICs) to identify exchange message, services and even software.  Therefore, BIC can be identified by well-known financial processing systems; and these standards are maintained under cooperation of international organizations for message defines standards.
Message type and description of SWIFT [3]

Different interface provide different targeting industries.  And for SWIFT, it provides services mainly for securities, treasury & derivatives, cash management and trade services.  SWIFT is also used for transfer of important message among banks, thus one of the feature is that SWIFT allow secure messages sent with encryption standard.  This provides usability to certain business processes among financial institutes that uses SWIFT.  Since it is a common interface rather than a system or database, it does not provide any account information storage or provide system functions such as clearing/settlement.
Major users of SWIFT [4]

Benefits of this interface 
-Reduced operational costs and risks [4]
-Secure, low-cost and connection in global manner
-Flexibility and scalability
-Improved customer service

Other illustrated benefits from the SWIFT website [4]
Further external explanations can be found under section “The Last Mile” in [5]’s website.

Financial supply chain is more the less getting benefits similar to product supply chain mentioned in lecture, this basically covers:

  • reduced delay in processes due to timely and automation after implementing the interface
  • reduction in manual and paperwork processes
  • increased knowledge sharing, this offers better CRM and increase market interaction
  • update/synchronization of information

Conclusion
After studied some other kinds of interface such as the SWIFT above, we can understand that e-business may have at first their own internal standard to coordinate its internal message coordination; however, to increase competitiveness and alignment within the industries’ market players, share of information/knowledge, process alignment are essential steps to keep the business’ interaction up to date with the market.  As a result, PIP or other EDI exchange standards are required to provide along external message coordination to achieve overall efficiency and performance of the business.  EDI standards and interfaces is not just about having a long collaborative process joint by several enterprises, but together business can share and collaborate higher quality information, through having these standards.

2012年4月15日 星期日

Lecture 11: Redesign principles and tactics


Reference:
[1] Redesign principles & Tactics
[3] Fedex – CRM
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Recap of last lecture
Tactics are some corresponding actions that can fulfill a redesign principle
Reason for using principles and tactics - Improve redesign outcome, such as
  • Promote value-add in a process (speed, cost, return on investment etc.)
  • Betterment of non-value adding activities (A&F, internet audit etc.)
  • Reduce resources spend in other things (obsolete activities, valueless complexities etc.)
Principle 1 – Lose wait
  • Reduction in processes waiting time -> create value
Tactics:
  • Concurrency (tasks to be done concurrently instead of sequentially)
    • If processes have different duration -> pass processed resources/information to slower processes, then proceed to new tasks
  • Closed-loop (team people together for quick interaction)
  • Not gating main process (not to delay a core value adding process with support activity)
  • Continuous flow (execute orders in real time, instead of batches)
  • Upstream relieves downstream (prevent bottleneck from affecting lateron processes)
Principle 2 – Orchestrate
  • Enterprises’ joint effort to produce better outcome
Tactics:
  • Partnering, outsourcing (let expertise provider to help with support)
  • In-sourcing (insource a process for fast/better coordination)
  • Routing through an intermediary (middle agent that provide bridge between suppliers and consumers)
Principle 3 – Mass-customize
  • FLEX the process any time, place and way
Tactics:
  • Flexing time (expanding time window)
  • Flexing space (create more options of doing a process)
  • Modularity (reduce path processes to modular processes)
  • Dynamic customization (e.g. BTO cars)
Principle 4 – Synchronize
  • Synchronize the physical and virtual parts of the process
*other principles will be applied and used in the follow case study
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Topic: Revision of redesign principles - case study of FedEx corporation

Fedex Corporation consists of four main segments – FedEx Express, FedEx Ground, FedEx Freight and FedEx Office, plus a few divisions.  FedEx services more than 220 countries, it has 688 aircraft and over 75,000 vehicles as of February 2012.

Fedex.com handles 15 million unique visitors monthly, 3 million tracking requests daily, and 15 million packages shipped monthly.

However, before having BPR, FedEx faced some key issues, such as:
  • Inefficient paper based processes for managing indirect purchase requisitions, ordering and delivery fulfillment
  • Labour intensive and manual processes
  • Need for an appropriate systems to keep all levels of operation in working order
  • Need for implementation of ERP based web and e-commerce system (as the volumn of business grew)

Here, some redesign principles are highlighted here for the 2 BPR carried out

BPR1 - ERP
FedEx spent annually $7 billion on indirect purchases such as subscription, cell phone, pagers, parts etc.

Therefore the selection and implementation of ARIBA B2B e-commerce platform, ARIBA system enabled FedEx to automate transactions on the internet and facilitate ESM (enterprise spending management)

Process
  • Invited its entire supplier circle and invited them to use ARIBA (e-procurement site)
  • Reduced unauthorized spending and administrative costs, and helped them to track spending patterns, and boosted internal efficiency

Achievements
  • Streamlining, some process reduced half of the total steps.  Overall purchasing cycle time reduced from 70% to 20% (purchase request time came down dramatically to 2-4 days, from earlier 17-19 days)
  • Achieve more competitive pricing from suppliers and in turn provide good benefits to its employees (cost saving at around 40%).  Full ROI achieved within 3 months
  • Facilitate spend analysis and purchasing pattern

Redesign principles and tactics
This complies with principle 2 – Orchestra, FedEx by utilizes an intermediary, procurement is done by middlemen between suppliers and FedEx, it saves costs and time, increase efficiency in procurement processes.

Linkages of ERP based system with ARIBA also helped FedEx saves 2 billion pieces of paper annually.  By synchronizing captured information between two systems, FedEx reduced the manual applications and processes, leading to reduction of human error in operations.  Both satisfied principle 5 – Digitize and Propagate, data automation and process paperless, allows shortening of cycle time in daily operation.

BPR2 - CRM
SAP R/3 is a client/server based application, it uilizes a 3-tiered model, by offers a complete development environment, developers can modify existing SAP code and develop their own functions, within the SAP framwork.

Process and achievement
Another redesign is the introduction of SAP to facilitate CRM processes of FedEx.
The SAP R/3 system helps FedEx to gain insights into key accounts, and actively helps monitor, store and track information of customers and prospects.

Moreover, it provided channels to track complaints and returns, customers are able to perform credit return request, product replacement etc., through CRM linkages by the SAP system.

Redesign principles and tactics
According to principle 10 – Personalize, keep track of personal process with personal profiles can increase customer intimacy.  Better returns management, and account management facilitates FedEx’s CRM.  As a result, customer satisfaction and retention are improved.  FedEx’s retain high revenue and performances among other competitors.

And for streamline in all common sales process (including quotations, order and contracts), it provides customers with service representatives with relevant information, thus able to perform effective decisions according to customer requests.  These approaches actually similar to the point concurrency under principle 1 – Lose wait.  The data retrieval, recommendations, quotations, and order etc can be readily prepared by having concurrency between these processes.  As a result efficiency in handling customers’ request is speeded up.