Database Reference
In-Depth Information
delivered by the frontline workers and disseminating to all frontline workforce on a continual
basis. It involves activities like the development of new guidelines when new resources become
available, the dynamic modification of existing guidelines when new situations are encountered,
and the periodic review of existing guidelines for continuous improvement.
There are two major categories of best-practice guidelines:
1. Needs diagnosis
2. Defining work, identifying resources/capacity, assigning work, and coordinating deliveries
The guideline should identify each task required, the skill needed to perform that task, the timing
of the task, the conditions under which the task needs to be performed, and the capacity required
to perform the task.
Processes are under continual review to verify the result and assess the delivered solution effec-
tiveness and efficiency of adopting the best-practice guidelines.
1.2.2.1.3 Responsive Task Management
Responsive task management is not unlike project management except that
◾
Customer requirements are often more similar than different, but never completely
identical
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Instead of a single big project, it is a series of smaller projects or tasks
◾
Lead time is typically shorter
It deals with the prioritized assignment list that is used to determine, plan, assign, and coor-
dinate the work steps composing the deliveries to the individual customers. It also deals with
the best-practice guidelines that must be developed to oversee the assigning, tracking, and
delivery process.
1.2.2.1.4 Responsive Capacity Management
Responsive capacity management is the process of maximizing capacity utilization to deliver ben-
efits to their customers. It is the process of minimizing unutilized capacity because whereas deliv-
ered capacity generates revenue, unutilized capacity creates only additional cost as this wasted
capacity cannot be inventoried. As discussed in the following, capacity is scheduled in the short
term but sold only in the real term.
The various methods utilized to maintain high utilization are as follows:
◾
Forecasting needs so that access capacity is not scheduled in the short term—the ideal situ-
ation being the matching of capacity scheduling to the capacity utilization.
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Cross-training of employees so that the same capacity can be used for a wider variety of
tasks; this is counter to the tendency of specialization in mass production or offering-based
enterprises.
◾
Developing cooperative networks for real-term flexibility; the main driver for this method
is the fact that cost of transactions coupled with the cost of interfacing, collaboration, coor-
dination, and communication between enterprises may be lower than the cost of those
