CHAPTER 4 Evaluating Alternatives With SIMPROCESS

CHAPTER 4
Evaluating Alternatives With SIMPROCESS

This chapter shows you how to create and evaluate alternatives with SIMPROCESS. The purpose of this chapter is twofold: 1) to familiarize you with the unique process analysis feature Alternative Sub-processes, and 2) to improve the process that you modeled in the first tutorial. First, a description of the To-Be Process and tutorial objectives is given. Then, a step-by-step tutorial is provided.

The To-Be Process Description and Tutorial Objectives

In this tutorial exercise, you will create a To-Be alternative of the hierarchical process named "Process Calls" for the mail order business model developed in the previous tutorial. The To-Be alternative process uses customer representatives that are trained to process both the customer service calls and sales calls. So, instead of sales reps being dedicated to the sales activity and service reps being dedicated to the customer service activity, the new resources named "Customer Reps" will be flexible to service all calls coming to the Mail Order Business. The hourly cost for each customer rep is $15.

The purpose of this SIMPROCESS exercise is to evaluate the process improvements that can be achieved by cross-training the service and sales representatives. Specifically, the objective is to reduce the maximum wait time for customer service calls from 36 minutes to under 8 minutes (.13 hour) while keeping the activity costs under $1,850 per 24 hours. Decision variables that you will tweak to meet the business objectives are the Units of Resources and the Hourly Cost per Unit.

Create the To-Be Alternative

Creating the To-Be alternative involves 3 simple steps

· Define a new resource type called "Customer Rep"

· Define the To-Be alternative subprocess for the process called "Process Calls"

· Save the model under the name "To-Be," and run the simulation

Defining the New Customer Representative Resource

From the main menu, choose the Define/Resources option. This brings up the Resources list box. To define the new resource, click on the Add button, type in the name "Customer Rep" and specify the Units as 7. To define the hourly labor rate, click on the Cost button and type in "15" in the Cost per Time Unit.

When you are done defining the cost for the new resource, click on the OK buttons and then the Close button until you are back to the layout.

Creating the To-Be Alternative Process

Select "Process Calls" and click on the Properties tool to bring up the dialog for this process. Notice that the list box contains the name "Alt1" in the Alternatives list box. Click on the Edit button and change the name to "As-Is." Then click on the Copy button and type in the name "To-Be" for the new alternative you are about to create. Then, click on OK. Notice that the new alternative is highlighted, meaning that when you descend into the process you will be in the "To-Be" alternative. Click on OK and close the Properties dialog.

You are now ready to define the sub-processes for the To-Be alternative of the "Process Calls" object. Double-click on the process box to drill down to the next level in the hierarchy. At this point, the layout looks exactly like the "As-Is" alternative. Remember that you had copied the contents of the "As-Is" alternative into the "To-Be" alternative.

Next, you modify the resource assignments so that the resources used for performing work are the new "Customer Reps". Let's first double click on the Customer Service activity and click on the Resources tab.

To remove the Service Rep resource from this assignment, simply click on the Remove button while that resource is highlighted. Then, select the "Customer Rep" resource from the list box and click on the Add button. This means that every service call will be handled by a Customer Rep instead. Click on the OK button to close this dialog and get back to the layout.

You also need to assign the Customer Reps to the Sales activity. To accomplish this task, repeat the same steps by removing the Sales Reps from the assignment and adding the Customer Reps to the resource assignment.

You are now done creating the To-Be alternative process. So, double-click in any blank space in the layout and get back to the major process level.

Simulate and Analyze the To-Be Process

You are now ready to simulate the To-Be alternative process. So, go ahead and select the Simulate/Run option (or click on the Runner icon in the tool bar). Since you did not change the As-Is alternative, it is still part of this model. However, when you run the simulation, SIMPROCESS will only simulate the To-Be alternative because that was the highlighted alternative when you left the Properties dialog of the "Process Calls" object. During the simulation of this alternative, double-click on the "Process Calls" hierarchical object to view the animation of the activity level. You may turn off the animation by pressing F8 or clicking the Animation button on the tool bar. When the simulation is completed, you will see that the Status Bar displays the message "Simulation Complete" indicating that SIMPROCESS is ready for you to edit the model or analyze the results.

Analyze the Results of the To-Be Process

Now, let's display the Standard Report.

First, let's take a look at "Entity : Total Count". This table shows that the redesigned process with 7 flexible Customer Reps serviced 475 sales calls and 252 customer service calls.

Next, let's look at "Entity : Cycle Time (in Hours) By State" and analyze the wait time reduction for the To-Be process. This report shows that the average wait time for Sales calls was .01 (.6 minutes) and for Service calls was .009 (.54 minutes) indicating that the wait time for service calls was reduced dramatically. The maximum values for wait times are .092 (5.5 minutes) for the sales calls and .078 (4.7 minutes) for the customer service calls. These peak wait times are much more acceptable considering the fact that only one of the 475 sales calls had to wait 5.5 minutes and only one of the 252 customer service calls had to wait 4.7 minutes.

Next, let's take a look at the cost statistics. The customer service activity cost is $967 and sales activity cost is $843 adding up the total activity costs to $1,810. This means we were able to achieve our desired business objectives by keeping total activity costs under $1,850. Let's close the Standard Report and the Display Standard Report dialog.

Compare Performance Measures from As-Is with To-Be

Let's now compare the results from the As-Is process with the To-Be process.

As-Is To-Be Report
The table below summarizes the results:
Sales	Customer Service	Total
460	234	694	As-Is Calls
475	252	727	To-Be Calls
$643	$900	$1,543	As-Is Activity Costs
$843	$967	$1,810	To-Be Activity Costs