Apply critical thinking to formulate a logical solution to a problem.
Establishing Baselines and Assessing Success
In this Assessment, you are going to evaluate a specific business process based on the criteria detailed below. If you already have selected a business process, continue using that and skip to the next paragraph. (please see attached business process for your convience if it can be helpful) If you have not yet selected the business process you will use for this Assessment, then begin by selecting a business process. The business process you select must have a clear beginning and an end with identifiable, specific steps.
For this Assessment, compose a paper that answers the following questions (use the subheadings/numbered questions below to organize your paper):
PART 1: Implementation Strategies
In the first section, you will use critical thinking skills to tackle the problem of revised process implementation. You will evaluate various implementation strategies and pick the best option for your project.
Analyze the suitability of the four implementation strategies discussed in your textbook to your project, determine the best one, and describe how you would design the implementation for your specific process based on this strategy.
- For each strategy, explain the specific pros and cons of using it for your project. Do not simply repeat the generic pros/cons from the textbook; your analysis should be based on how each strategy applies to the process you selected and the nature of your selected organization. Discuss the makeup of your organization as well as the requirements of your process and anticipate how each strategy may experience difficulties.
- Select the one you think will work the best in your situation. Justify your selection.
- Explain how you would design and execute this implementation strategy for your selected process. What would be required for the success of this strategy when rolling out your revised process?
PART 2: Establishing Baselines
To begin with, list three metrics that you think can help you quantify the performance of the current process. List and define the metrics clearly, explain why each metric is important in the assessment of the process, and then give an example of the statistic units. For example, if your metric is speed of processing it may be defined by how quickly each employee audits a tax form, and the example would be that βon average you would expect eight tax forms audited per hour.β
Then, revisit the metrics that you selected for your baseline. For each metric, clearly discuss the following:
- Describe what the metric is: how is it calculated and used currently?
- As far as being used as a justifiable project goal, what kind of a change in this metric would constitute success? How did you arrive at this figure? If this target change figure is not possible to estimate now, then describe how you would compute it if you were actually carrying out this project. Who would be involved and where would the data come from?
PART 3: Case Analysis
Read the following case study and answer the questions at the end.
In 2020, ABC Computer Company decided to implement a BPM project to reduce the assembly cost per computer with the following goals:
- Decrease the labor cost per computer, and
- Increase profit for each computer sold by 5%.
To track the success (or failure) of the project, they determined the following baseline data for 2020:
Total # of Computers Sold |
Materials Cost Per Computer |
Labor Cost Per Computer |
Average Retail Price Per Computer |
Average Profit Per Computer |
8958 |
$462 |
$178 |
$899 |
$259 |
After implementing the BPM project, ABC Computer Company reviewed the value of the project after a year and identified the following information:
Total # of Computer Sold |
Total Materials Cost |
Total Labor Cost |
Average Retail Price Per Computer |
9562 |
$4,176,000 |
$1,385,000 |
$925.97 |
Using the data provided above, calculate and fill in the following table (show all your work; completing the table without the calculations will result in no credit):
Materials Cost Per Computer |
Labor Cost Per Computer |
Average Profit Per Computer |
|
|
|
After the table is complete, answer the following questions: (see attachment for your convience).
- Why is it important to ensure that the baseline data is accurate?
- Was the project successful? Why or why not?