Improving Service Process Flow Chart

Abstract

The business challenge for the case company was lost service business and revenue related to it. Which was caused by a too complex and slow service process. To improve the situation of the case company, an improved service process flow chart needed to be created. The improved service process flow chart was created by first defining the objective and outcome of the thesis, after which research and data plan were created. The thesis then continued to current state analysis (CSA) stage, where the current practices of the case company were studied. In the CSA section a stakeholder on each process phase was interviewed, and it revealed several strengths and weaknesses, of which three main weaknesses were chosen to be the focus of the improvement. These were the complexity of the current service process, unclear roles and responsibilities. To solve these issues a conceptual framework (CF) was produced using academic literature as source material. The CF is based on lean philosophy, which is utilized to solve the three main weaknesses, with value stream mapping, RACI charting, and continuous improvement. Value stream mapping was used to recognize the activities in the original service process that add value to the customer. Then the rest of the original process activities were categorized either as waste or necessary waste. Based on this outcome, the service process flow map was rebuilt and simplified, to have the minimum number of actions, that create value, or are necessary waste. The RACI chart was created based on the newly created service process flow chart. The purpose of the RACI chart is to define in more detail what is expected to happen by the stakeholders in each process face. Since the time frame of this thesis does not allow for a full-scale pilot, also a continuous improvement plan was created, to prevent bottlenecks from forming in the process, when the new process would be implemented. The final improvement for the service process flow chart was a definition of how the information flow through the process should be handled. The improvement in information flow was made by creating simple rules that should be followed when communicating within the company and with clients. In addition to the communication rules, a continuous improvement plan was created, to improve the flow of information once the new process has been established in full scale. With the improved service process flow the case company can achieve faster reaction times to service enquiries with less resources.