Managing Operations

M-T/MNO
Process Design

Yousuf Al Khamisi
PhD, MBA, BsN, LSSMBB
BDQ Consultancy, CEO
 • Understand how and why process
Learning mapping can be carried out
• Understand the key measures for
Objectives process design and management
• Compare the basic processing types

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Process selection
Introduction
 Process selection
Refers to deciding on the way production of goods or services will be
organized
New product
Periodic re-configuration
It has major implications for
• Capacity planning
• Layout of facilities
• Equipment
• Design of work systems

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Process Selection and System Design

Facilities and
Forecasting Capacity Equipment
Planning

Product and Layout

Service Design

Process
Technological Selection Work
Change Design

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Process selection
 It is a demand driven.
 Three questions to concern DM:

How much variety in What degree of

products or services equipment What is the expected
will the system need flexibility will be volume of output?
to handle? needed?

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Process types
 Job shop:
• Small scale; low volume of high variety goods or service
• Intermittent processing – work includes small jobs, each with different
processing requirements
• High flexibility using general purpose equipment and skilled workers.

Job Shop

Batch

Repetitive Continuous

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Process types
 Batch:
• A moderate volume of goods or services
• A moderate variety in products or services
• The equipment needs less flexibility compared to job shop but
processing is still intermittent
• Lower skill level not as in a job shop because there is less variety in the
jobs

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Process types
 Repetitive or assembly line:
• When higher volumes of more standardized goods or services are
needed, repetitive processing is used. Standardized output means only
slight flexibility of equipment is needed
• The requirement of skilled workers is generally low

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Process types
 Continuous:
• A very high volume of non-discrete, highly standardized output is desired
• Almost no variety in output and hence no need for equipment flexibility
• Highly specialized equipment can turn down the requirement of expert
worker

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• A Mass-production process is High volume, Low variety
• Standard, repeating production of identical products. Narrowly
defined tasks, may be low skilled jobs. May have some
setup/changeover.
• E.g. car manufacturing, clothes production.

• A Mass Service is High volume, Low variety

• many customers, limited (or scripted) contact, narrow
repetitive tasks. Lots of “back-office” work
• E.g. a call centre, fast-food restaurant.
Process types

Repetitive/
Job Shop Batch Assembly Continuous
Description Customized Semi- Standardized Highly standardized
goods or standardized goods or Goods or
services goods or services services
services

Advantages Able to handle a Flexibility; easy Low unit Very efficient, very
wide variety to add or change cost, high high volume
of work products or volume, efficient
services

Disadvantages Slow, high cost Moderate cost Low flexibility, Very rigid, lack of
per unit, per unit, high cost of variety, costly to
complex moderate downtime change, very
planning and scheduling high cost of
scheduling complexity downtime

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Process types
 Project:
 A non-repetitive set of activities directed toward a unique goal within
limited time frame
 A project is used for work that is non-routine, with a unique set of
objectives to be accomplished in a limited time frame
 Equipment flexibility and worker skill can range from low to high

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Process types

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Process types?
• Movie production
• Bakery
• Restaurant

• University
• Car repairing
(car mechanic shop)
• Oil mining
• Producing office tools
• Veterinarian

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Process design
Detailed process design
• Process mapping
• Throughput, cycle time and work-in-
process
• Little’s law
• Balancing and bottlenecks
• Throughput efficiency
Process mapping symbols

Slack et al., 2015

Standard Sandwich

Raw Stored Move to Stored Take Payment

Assembly Sell
Materials Sandwiches Outlets Sandwiches

Standard sandwich process

Customer
Request

Slack et al., 2011

Customised Sandwich

Raw Take Payment

Materials Assembly

Customer
Request

Slack et al., 2011

 Assemble as Take
Prepare required payment
The operation of Sandwich materials Customers
making and selling and customers “assembled” to
customised sandwiches
sandwiches

Bread and Base

filling The outline process of making
Assemble whole and selling customised
sandwich
Use standard
sandwiches
“base”?
No

Yes Fillings
Customer Request The detailed process of
assembling customised
Assemble from
standard “base”
sandwiches
Stored
“Bases” Slack et al., 2011
Process timing

Slack et al., 2015

Detailed process design
How can we use process maps to improve processes?
This will require you to understand:

• Work content = the total amount of work required to produce a unit of output

• Throughput time = is the time for a unit to move through the process

• Cycle time (takt) = the average time between units of output emerging from the
process

• Work in progress= the number of units in the process as an average over a period
of time
Capacity

• usually refers to how many units of output can be produced

by an operation over a given time,
• e.g. 100 donuts per minute, 20 sandwiches an hour, 100
patients a day

• In services it often means input or holding capacity

• e.g. 200 hospital beds, 100 cinema seats
Capacity Utilisation
Capacity used
Capacity utilisation rate =
Maximum capacity

• If a plane can transport 100 passengers per flight, but only 60 seats are occupied on a particular flight, the
capacity utilisation is 60%
• If a bakery can produce 100 loaves per hour, but it actually produces 75, the utilisation rate is 75%
• If there are no constraints, the capacity is 1/CT
Little’s law
A 60 minute task with a required cycle time of 15 minutes.....

p ro cess
thin
Long
15 15 15 15
1 every 15 minutes

60
30 30
1 every 15
minutes 60
1 every 15
30 30 minutes
60

ro c ess
• What are the advantages & disadvantages fatp
60 rt
of long thin or short fat processes? Sh o
‘Long & thin’ versus ‘short & fat’ layouts

https://youtu.be/raRpbsWQBCo
Little’s law

𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑣𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒
𝐶𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒=
𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑑

𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡
𝑁𝑜 . 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑓𝑓 =
𝐶𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒
Little’s law How long will it
take? How long it
takes to do one
Number of of them
things to do
Throughput time =
Work-in-process x Cycle Time
• Cycle Time (CT, or takt time) is the average time between units
of output emerging from a process. In other words, the length of
time an activity takes before repeating, e.g. the time between
successive customers in a shop.
• Throughput Time is the amount of time to complete a whole
operation from start to finish, including all of the individual
processes.
• Work content is the total amount of work required to produce
one unit of output.
• Work in process is the number of units in the process over a
period of time, e.g. the length of queues.
Little’s Law
Throughput (TH) = Work In Process (WIP) x Cycle Time (CT)

Cycle time =
2 mins

WIP = 10
Throughput time = ?

Throughput time = 10 x 2 mins

Throughput time = 20 mins

Little’s Law Example
Throughput (TH) = Work In Process (WIP) x Cycle Time (CT)

Need to mark 500 exam scripts in 5 days (working 7 hours a day). Takes 1 hour to mark
a script. How many markers are needed?

Throughput time = 5 days x 7 hours = 35 hours

35 hours = 500 scripts x Cycle time

Cycle time = 35 hours = 0.07 hours

500 scripts

Number of markers = Work content = 1 hour =

14.29 Cycle time 0.07
Little’s Law Example
• Customers in a sandwich shop should be served in no more than 4
mins and the capacity allows 10 people to be in the shop at once.
The process can be performed in 1.2 minutes, how many staff are
needed?
• Throughput time = Work-in-process x cycle time
• Throughput = 4 minutes
• WIP = 10
• Throughput = WIP x cycle time
• Cycle time = throughput/WIP
• = 4/10 = 0.4 minutes
• Number of servers required = 1.2 / 0.4 = 3
Balancing loss
Balancing loss is that proportion of the time invested in processing the product or
service which is not used productively
An ideal ‘balance’ where work is allocated equally between the stages...
3
Cycle time = 2.5 mins Work allocated to stage
2.5

2
Load

1.5

0.5

0
1 2 3 4
Stage
Balancing loss
But if work is not equally allocated, the cycle time will increase and ‘balancing
losses’ will occur.....
3.5
Cycle time = 3.0 mins Work allocated to stage
3
Idle time
2.5
g lo s s: . 0 – 2 .2)
2
g b a lancin – 2 . 5 ) + (3
atin (3.0
Calcul –2 . 3 ) +
Load

1.5 = (3.0
m e . 0 m ins
Idle ti = 2
1 c y cle 2. 0
every g = 4 x 3.0
n cin
Bala
0.5 s s = 0 . 1667
lo
. 67%
= 16
0
1 2 3 4
Stage
Throughput efficiency
• The idea that the throughput time of a process is different from the work content of
whatever it is processing has important implication.

• What it means is that for significant amounts of time no useful work is being done to
materials, information or customers that are processing through the process.

Throughput efficiency is the work content of whatever is being

processed as a percentage of its throughput time

Work content
Throughput efficiency = X 100
Throughput time
Process Design: Key points
• Product/Service design affect operations process design
• Processes should be designed to fit with the required level of volume/variety of products
• Process Mapping
• Visual representations help to make processes repeatable and are essential for quality and
process improvement.
• Little’s Law
• Key measures of process design are captured by Little’s Law (throughput = WIP * cycle
time), which allows managers to control inventory, queues, capacity and staff.
Q. What trade-offs are
involved when deciding
how often to rebalance
an assembly line?

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Reading
• Slack et al. (2011) Essentials of Operations Management
– Chapter 5 – Process Design

Extra resources:
Khan, O. (2010) Product design and the supply chain. Available at:
https://hstalks.com/t/1869/product-design-and-the-supply-chain/?business
Thank
you…

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