Fishbone Analysis for Evaluating Supply Chain in St James Hospital - Case Study Example

Critical Review of BPM in Practice (Students Name) (Institution) (Date) Application of Fishbone Analysis for Evaluating Supply Chain and Business Process- A CASE OF THE ST JAMES HOSPITAL The first conclusion concerns the fact that efficient Supply Chain Management in a hospital stems from proper management of materials within the hospitals. The use of fish was born analysis tool for St. James Hospital revealed that lack of professional handling of orders, inventory and orders lead to poor Supply Chain Management. Some of the particular concerns in the poor management of resources include high associated costs, the duplicity of orders, overstocking and even under stocking of inventory. In conclusion, organisations need to have a more professional manner in handling materials and inventory so as to ensure effective Supply Chain Management (Bose 2012). This conclusion has a practical implication on the manner in which organisations take care of their materials so as to achieve an efficient Supply Chain Management. The procurement department needs to ensure that only professionals are left to handle and manage the resources. An organisation would immensely benefit from applying professionalism in the management of resources materials since it would ensure efficient flow of the Supply Chain Management. The second conclusion concerns the fact that the environment within which an organisation operates highly determines the efficiency of Supply Chain Management. The environment within which St. James Hospital operates is restrictive and not convenient for an effective Supply Chain Management process. Some of the particular bottlenecks within the environment include protectionism, unsound setup, resistance to change and rivalry among the employees. St. James Hospital exemplifies an organisation which fails to meet its Supply Chain Management as a result of the challenges within the working environment (Bose 2012). These are revealed through the application of fish born analysis tool that reveals rivalry and lack of cooperation among the employees as one of the major problems within the working environment. The practical implication of this conclusion is to create an enabling environment through involving employees in making the work schedule. This will potentially reduce resistance to change. The company can also use the strategic plan as a solution to creating an enabling environment. Organisations rely on the strategic plan which offers a guideline on the requisite environment factors to enable successful implementation of Supply Chain Management. The employees need to understand their role and be motivated towards achieving the goals of the organisation. Besides, the policies should be contingent towards addressing threats and challenges in the organisation as a means of motivating the employees. The third conclusion concerns the fact that inefficient management leads to inefficient and ineffective Supply Chain Management. The management performs a critical role in an organisation. The management acts as the direction-giver to the organisation. Therefore, the efforts towards streamlining and ensuring effective Supply Chain Management all lies within the purview of the management. In the case of St. James Hospital, the management suffered from inefficiency. This resulted in problems such as hidden costs, lack of innovation, lack of employee motivation and short budget among other challenges (Bose 2012). The practical implication of this conclusion concerns the fact that the management is the organ responsible for full decision-making processes in an organisation. Therefore, when the management is less efficient, then less sufficient decisions become the product of the organisation. Therefore, an organisation needs proper recruitment search to pick on qualified managers, need to train the existing managers and also involve the employees in the overall decision-making in the company. This helps in improving the nature of decisions made. Business Process Simulation: How to get it right? The first conclusion is drawn on the limitation of process simulations the fact that it only focuses on design as opposed to Operational Decision Making. Process simulation is normally intended to analyse and assess processes of the business before they are finally applied into proactive. They are essentially meant to help in making operational decisions on the activities existing within the business. However, this process has failed to meet this requirement since many organisations majorly focus on its design only. One of the reasons is the lack of traditional simulation tools to capture the actual and real processes in the organisation. Besides, most business process simulation tools are designed to focus on tactical or strategic decisions. Therefore, this makes them lack an operational significance and instead focus on design (Nakatumba et al. 2009). The practical implication is to apply the PAIS (Process-Aware Information System) which is highly focused on the current situation. PAIS Model has specific concerns on the immediate working processes and environment. Therefore, its application is essential to management that requires an understanding of the immediate and current events within the working environment. The second conclusion is the challenge experienced when the Business Simulation Process models its system from scratch rather than using the existing information or artefacts. Models such as PAIS are normally designed from scratch. They don’t rely on the current data, logs and models existing within the business. The challenge by this is that important information and processes are lost especially when the design and the implemented model fail to match. Suppose the simulation process was to integrate the information, data and logs directly, then a more robust and significant system would be created. Simulation process ultimately aims at improving the business processes as much as possible. It’s, therefore, essential that the process integrates basic information and data required for purposes of improving the business activities. In conclusion, lack of integration of artefacts and information in the process of simulation makes it less effective. The practical implication of this conclusion is to inform the management’s decisions regarding the kind of simulation model to integrate. The process and the model was chosen needs to be current and able to take into consideration the various processes and information needed to improve business operations. Several models of business simulation exist. The choice of any single model to use therefore determines the expected results and efficiency receivable by the organisation. The third conclusion regards the misleading and incorrect modelling of resources in the simulation processes. Simulation normally recognises the contributions of various resources and underscores their relevance in contributing to the overall success of business activities. The human factor, for example, has been poorly modelled by simulation. The process assumes that people are involved in single processes which are not the case; people are normally involved in multiple processes. Also, the simulation models human speed as constant and uniform in carrying out the activities on an organisation. This is, however, not the case since people have different speed and carry out their duties with differences. The application of this conclusion is in the management of any organisation to consider the best way to simulate the human effort. The relevance of people in the simulation process is quite significant. This, therefore, requires the modelling process to have the most realistic manner of perceiving the involvement of people in the organisation. The correct modelling of various resources used in the organisation translates into having correct results of the entire modelling process. BPM and Simulation: A White Paper The first conclusion in this paper relates to the need to adopt BPMN (Business Process Modelling Notation) to visualise the processes in a Business Process Management (BPM). BPM is normally a sequential set of activities aimed at improving the general services and processes which are carried out within the organisation. The success depends on how best they are managed and aligned to the goals of the organisation. BPMN 2.0 is successful in portraying various process activities, people within the process and the intended objectives out of the entire process (Beattie S& Smith 2013). It’s significant in providing a pictorial overview of the entire process management carried out in an organisation. Therefore, it’s a tool which best help the organisation to clearly carry out and monitor BPM. The application of this conclusion is to any organisation which seeks to make good use of its BPM processes. BPMN 2.0 will aid in offering a good visualisation of the entire process and also helps identify points of weaknesses in the system. The second conclusion concerns the relevance of BPM in the simulation process. Simulation is normally carried out to identify hidden process costs, hidden process bottlenecks, resources used and the people within the organisational processes. This practice requires proper record and documentation to clearly establish the various processes within the organisation. This, therefore, helps the process simulation to use factual data and documented in the entire process. The practical application of this is to use BPMN 2.0 as one of the tools pre-requisite to the actual simulation process. This tool significantly establishes areas of improvement and also helps in arranging and documenting the relevant information needed in process simulation. The third conclusion regards the relevance of step-to-step approach in conducting Process Modelling Capability. The efficiency of the process analysis depends on how effective the various stages are integrated (Beattie S& Smith 2013). The paper concludes that a five-stage model is the best way of approaching conducting Process Modelling Capability. These stages include Process Capture, Collaborative Process Design, Process Simulation, Process Execution and Process Analytics. These stages help in ensuring that the analysis and simulation of the entire process are well monitored and checked. The practicality of this conclusion rests on the organisations to integrate the phase-top-phase model in carrying out conducting Process Modelling Capability. Once the various processes are integrated into the modelling, then the organisation will be able to ensure that all important features and information about the company processes are captured and executed in the entire process. Business Process Management – the next wave in operational effectiveness, PwC, 2013 The first conclusion concerns the need to understand and integrate the various implementation phase of BPM to ensure its effectiveness. The implementation requires the understanding of the Business Case, High-Level Design, building the Iterative solution, Implementation and operation of the model. The various stages help in ensuring that the entire models highly effective (O'Mahoney & Markham 2013). The application of this conclusion is the construction of a BPM model. It’s essential that the proposed steps be integrated during the implementation so as to ensure that all relevant implementation areas are taken care of and considered. The second conclusion concerns the need to understand the various important factors to consider before implementing the model. Some of these include whether the vendor functionalities meet the requirements of the business, ensuring build up of internal capabilities and the business. This is essential so as to understand the areas which require management. This conclusion is relevant and applies to business decisions on a BPM model to choose. It helps identify various areas which require the need for management and how to carry them out. The third conclusion concerns the need for IT in carrying out an effective BPM. IT is helpful in automation of various processes which are carried out in simulation and BPM. Therefore, IT is one of the ways through which a business can realise a successful BPM (O'Mahoney & Markham 2013). The application of this conclusion is to integrate various IT modules and packages such as those offered by PwC. These IT packages help in automation of the BPM process and also advance the efficiency of the process. References Beattie, V., & Smith, S. J. (2013). Value creation and business models: Refocusing the intellectual capital debate. The British Accounting Review, 45(4), 243-254. Bose, T. K. (2012). Application of Fishbone Analysis for Evaluating Supply Chain and Business Process–A Case Study on the ST James Hospital. International Journal of Managing Value and Supply Chains (IJMVSC), 3(2), 17-24. Bulten, N. W. H., Verbeek, R., & Van Esch, B. P. M. (2006). CFD simulation of the flow through a waterjet installation. In International Conference on Waterjet Propulsion (Vol. 4, pp. 11-19). Nakatumba, J., Rozinat, A., & Russell, N. (2009). Business process simulation: How to get it right. In International Handbook on Business Process Management. O'Mahoney, J., & Markham, C. (2013). Management consultancy. Oxford University Press. Read More