Getting the Same Resource Later in the Model for Business Process Improvement

Introduction

Being in the field of business process improvement for such a long time gives one the experience and know how on how to handle several different problems, when they arrive. One of my only interests for writing my experiences out is to be able to help others find and implement what I do, so rather then they spending hours on end trying to solve some minor problems on their own, will use my articles and learn from it in minutes.

One business process simulation problem that process improvement experts face a lot of time is when they require the same Resource to be available for work again later in the model, for example Resource (Worker) worked on an Entity in Activity (Process1), and now the same Resource (Worker) should work on the same Entity when it reaches Activity (Process4) for example. The problem seems simple to solve and believe me it is, but creating an optimal logic diagram for the scenario above is very difficult, mind it that professional Lean Six Sigma experts that to process improvement process always try to create a logic diagram of the problem they are trying to solve. So I have done the hard part and now I will let you know how to process map the scenario for business process improvement.

Creating Process Map

The process map for this scenario depends on scenario to scenario, I mean your scenario and process map may require the entity to be processed at Activity (Process1) and then at Activity (Process 11 or Process 2). For this heading I will say that you create the process map that is required in your condition. The example scenario I am creating will have six Activities, three Resources, and one entity coming in, Activity (Process1 and Process4) will be the one where the same Resource (out of three) will be needed to work on the entity.

Setting Arrivals

As with the process map, you can set your arrivals as per your needs, for the example business process improvement scenario I will be using the default arrivals.

Declaring Attributes

For this scenario we will only use one Attribute, the one Attribute will be used to store the value of what the Resource is (ex: a_Resource), in case there are multiple Activities where the same entity may use another resource and then use the same ahead (replicating the scenario twice) you will want to use multiple Attributes.

Defining Routes

As was with the case with setting process map and arrivals, in this scenario you’re free to define your own routes as per your process mapping needs. For this scenario all my routes are percentage 100%.

The Action Logic

The Action Logic used in this scenario is not much complicated. As I said I created a logic diagram before I created this Action Logic so I can pretty much guarantee that this is the smartest way of doing it. On the first Activity (say Process1) where you want the Resource to work on the Entity, goto the Action logic tab and using the GET statement get either Worker1, Worker2 or Worker3 (ex:Get Worker1 Or Worker2 Or Worker3)

In the next statement within the same Activity use the Attribute (a_Resource) to store the value of the owned Resource (ex: a_Resource = OwnedResource()), next set the time you want the Resource to work on the Entity (ex: Time(5 Min)), free the Resource afterword’s (ex: Free All).

Now on the second Activity (say Process4) you want the Entity to use the same Resource it used on Activity (Process1), we use an IF and ELSE IF statement to check the value of the Attribute (a_Resource) and then GET the Resource accordingly (ex: If a_Resource = 1 Then Get Worker1 Else If a_Resource = 2 Then Get Worker2  Else If a_Resource = 3 Then Get Worker3), next set the time you want the Resource to work on the Entity (ex: Time(5 Min)) , free the Resource afterword’s (ex: Free All). This is it, if you want to do the same for a third Activity you can use the same logic all over again as many times as you want.

Conclusion

As you see that the process improvement scenario that looked like a big problem before, it was actually solved in a logical and understandable manner. If anything here did not made sense to you and you get trouble trying to implement it, let me know and I will be glad to help (once I have time). You may also want to look at my process simulation blog where I discuss one of the best business process simulation software out there, or how about learn creating Activity that has dynamic capacity.