Decision Support and Business Process Improvement
Decision Support and Business Process Improvement tests the analytic methods used to justify resource decisions and to make support processes cheaper, faster, and better controlled. Expect questions asking which tool fits a problem, how a metric should be defined, and what internal control requires.
Process improvement
- Lean attacks waste - overproduction, waiting, transport, overprocessing, inventory, motion, defects, and unused talent - using value stream mapping, 5S, and kaizen events.
- Six Sigma attacks variation using DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) and statistical process control to separate common-cause from special-cause variation.
- Root cause tools: 5 Whys and fishbone diagrams. Do not stop at the symptom.
- Throughput is set by the bottleneck; improving a non-bottleneck step adds nothing.
Decision support
Cost-benefit and business case analyses compare alternatives on life-cycle cost and measurable benefit; return on investment and payback support prioritization; activity-based costing exposes what a process costs per output. Performance frameworks include the Balanced Scorecard and the GPRA Modernization Act, which requires strategic plans, annual performance plans, and performance reports - and emphasizes outcomes over outputs.
Controls and risk
The GAO Green Book sets five internal control components - control environment, risk assessment, control activities, information and communication, and monitoring - and OMB Circular A-123 requires management to assess and report on them.
Worked example
A travel voucher process has steps taking 4, 9, and 5 minutes, so the 9-minute step is the bottleneck and capacity is 60/9 = 6.7 vouchers per hour, even though other steps could handle more. Adding a reviewer to the 4-minute step changes nothing; cutting the bottleneck to 7 minutes raises capacity to 8.6 per hour. That is the improvement to fund.
Traps
Confusing Lean (waste) with Six Sigma (variation); funding a non-bottleneck; reporting outputs such as vouchers processed instead of outcomes such as error rate; and treating common-cause variation as a special cause.