Page 375 - Design for Six Sigma for Service (Six SIGMA Operational Methods)
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Design and Improvement of Service Processes—Process Management 335
Service Cost
Service cost is certainly a measure of process performance. Service cost
depends on many factors, such as process efficiency and labor cost. A poorly
designed service process often creates a lot of waste, waiting time, errors,
and bottlenecks, and it is often one of the most important contributors to
excessive service cost.
Resource Utilization
Resource utilization can be measured by the total time that a particular piece
of resource is used divided by the total elapsed time. For example, the per-
centage of a medical doctor’s time in doing value-added work, such as
taking care of patients, divided by his or her total time spent in the hospital,
is a measure of resource utilization of this medical doctor. It is desirable that
all important resources are used at 100 percent. However, uneven resource
utilization is a very common problem.
Pure Service Shop Process Analysis
Typical activities in pure service shop process include
• Customer arriving
• Greeting customers
• Taking customer orders
• Checking customer order and designing customer service
• Customer waiting
• Providing needed services
• Customer departing
The resources needed for a service factory process vary greatly depending
on the nature of the service. For the health-care industry, expensive labs and
diagnostic equipment; hospital infrastructure; qualified doctors, nurses, and
staff; and computer information systems are all resources. Good design of
the service process, equipment maintenance, facility design and layout, and
training for service providers and support staff are the primary determinants
of service factory process success.
The answers to the following questions may be very helpful in designing
and improving a pure service shop process:
• Which layout provides the most convenient customer flow and
minimizes delays?
• What is the peak capacity of the system?
• Which resources can be shared in peak times to minimize waiting time?