Page 429 - Design for Six Sigma for Service (Six SIGMA Operational Methods)

Design and Improvement of Service Processes—Process Management 387

Table 10.3 Simulation Results on Cycle Time and Process Costs

Activity Cycle Time (min) Process Cost ($/min)
Taking loss report 28.58 0.37

Perform loss investigation 52.73 0.61
Perform loss analysis 12.33 0.40
Determine exposure 12.2 0.63

Evaluate damage 18.2 1.36
Evaluate liability 14.15 0.38
Negotiate claim 12.03 0.67

Conclude claim 15.6 0.46

10.7.4 Process Design
Based on the process diagnosis conducted, the following design alternatives
were developed.
Alternative 1: As-is current USAA insurance process
Alternative 2: Process simplification of USAA insurance process
Alternative 3: Case type departmentalization of USAA insurance
process
Alternative 1 was the current design. Further simulation analysis on this
current design yielded the following results:

• Average cycle time to complete a claim was 21.4 hours (1283 minutes).
• Average number of claims in process (waiting) at the bottleneck activity
was 239.
• Difference between highest and lowest personnel utilization was
93 percent.
• Throughput was 25 claims per week.
Figure 10.33 shows the service providers’ utilization rate. Obviously, there
were tremendous workload inbalances among different service providers.

Alternative 2 was a design simplification of the current process; it had the
following features: