Ops 571 Week 1

Design a Flow Chart for a Process

Jason Smith

OPS 571

August 18, 2011

Professor

Design a Flow Chart for a Process

Understanding how a process works is essential to maintaining a competitive advantage over the competition. Without a competitive advantage it doesn’t matter how many products a company sells as the end result is the competitor being able to do the same task for less money by using less time, materials and labor. This paper will analyze a process and determine specific ways in which the process can be completed in a more efficient manner. A flow chart will be utilized as a visual aid to understand where exactly the efficiency gains can be made.

According to Chase, Jacobs, and Aquilano, any operation that takes inputs and transforms them into outputs is the definition of a process. The task of getting out of bed and preparing to head off to work is a great example of a process that could be significantly improved by using a specific metric to analyze the factors that affect the process design. In this case, the metric used will be time as the process from waking to exiting the house on my way to work is approximately 1 hour.

The following factors directly affect the process design and can have a significantly effect on the metric of time.

1. Hitting the snooze button versus waking up when the alarm goes off the first time.

2. Taking a shower.

3. Having clothes readily available versus searching for them first thing in the morning.

4. Ironing clothes.

5. Eating breakfast or taking breakfast and eating while at work.

In conclusion, a process that is completed on a daily basis has been analyzed and the specific metric of “time” has been used to measure the process. Throughout this week there will be opportunities to improve efficiency by either shortening or eliminating certain processes all together.

References

Chase, R. B., Jacobs, F. R., & Aquilano, N. J. (2005). Operations Management for Competitive

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