OPSMGT 258 Business Process Design Assignment 1, 2026 | TUA

OPSMGT 258 Business Process Design Assignment 1

Question 1: 35 marks 

Read the following case description of a process at the National University, then answer the questions based on evidence from the case. You can consider a day to be an eight-hour workday.

Case: A process

Metro City Library acquires approximately 15,000 new books annually for its collection. These books are requested by either library staff or by patrons. 80% of requests come from staff via an internal system, while 20% come from patrons.

Patron requests need to be manually checked for completeness by a librarian, and any missing information is entered by the librarian. This takes approximately 2-6 minutes per request. Once all the missing information is entered into the system, the request is automatically sent to the Procurement Team. Staff requests go directly to the Procurement Team.  When requests are with the Procurement Team, a team member reviews the application (which takes 2 minutes).

If the book is already in the collection, the request is rejected, and an email is sent to the requester to inform them. It takes 1-3 minutes on average to draft and send the email. Around 5% of requests are for books that are already in the collection. Books that cost under $100 can be ordered immediately (75% of books). Books costing $100 or more must be manually approved by the head librarian before they are ordered. This takes 1-2 minutes per book, but the head librarian only reviews book requests at the beginning of the day. This means that, on average, book requests are waiting for 4 hours (during working hours) for approval.  If the book is available with one of the library's preferred vendors, then the Procurement Team submits an order through an online portal (3 minutes on average). About 85% of books are provided by preferred vendors. Otherwise, the book is special ordered via email.

This takes on average 10 minutes, and it takes on average 1-2 days for the library to receive confirmation of the order. Confirmed orders (through the online portal and through special order) take on average 5 days to be delivered. Once the book arrives, a librarian catalogues and shelves the book, which takes approximately 20 minutes for each book.

1. Use IBM WebSphere to develop an ‘AS-IS’ process model for the process at the Metro City Library. Your process model should be in the ‘Free-Form Layout,’ and should show an appropriate process name. Where the information is available, display task duration and wait times. Decision points should show the ‘Decision Percentage Labels.’ Insert the picture of your process model into your Word document on a landscape page for submission. [25 marks]
2. Calculate the Theoretical and the Actual Flow Time for the ‘AS-IS’ process at the Metro City Library. You can consider a day to be an eight-hour workday. Show your full workings in table format within your report using a copy of the table template in the Word file “Assignment – Flowtime Calculations Template” provided on Canvas. [5 marks]
3. Calculate the capacities of the librarians, the head librarian, and the Procurement Team. There are 5 librarians, one head librarian, and 3 members of the Procurement Team. All staff work 50 weeks a year, and 8 hours each workday. However, the head librarian only spends up to 1 hour a day approving book requests. You can assume that the head librarian does not assist the other librarians with any other parts of the process. Show your full workings in table format within your report using copies of the table template in the Word file “Assignment – Capacity Calculations Template” provided on Canvas. Create a separate table for each resource. [5 marks]

Question 2

Part A

Consider the following process for manufacturing clothes used by Zara. Blanks stored in a raw material inventory (RMI) are cut and then sewn and are then put in a finished goods inventory (FGI). The cutting and sewing tasks use different resources. There is no buffer between cutting and sewing. Different employees work on the cutting and sewing process.

1. What is the capacity of this process? Justify your answer. [1 mark] 
2. What is the cycle time at the non-bottleneck task? Justify your answer. [1 mark] 
3. Are any tasks starved or blocked? If so, then why and for how long?  [2 marks] 
4. Assume the system is operating at capacity. What proportion of the time is the operator at the ‘Cutting’ task actually working? What about at the ‘Sewing’ task? Show appropriate workings and justify your answer. [3 marks] 
5. Is this a make-to-stock or make-to-order process? Justify your answer. [2 marks] 
6. What is the theoretical flow time of this process? What additional information would you need to calculate the actual flow time? Show appropriate workings and justify your answer. [3 marks]
7. Assume the system is operating at capacity, and the actual flow time is 3 hours. What is the Work in Process of the entire process (including all tasks and inventories)? Show appropriate workings. [3 marks] 

Part B

Due to recent layoffs, the capacity at sewing has been reduced, as depicted below.

1. What is the capacity of this process? Justify your answer. [1 mark]
2. Are any tasks starved or blocked? If so, then why and for how long? [2 marks]
3. Assume the system is operating at capacity. What proportion of the time is the operator at the ‘Cutting’ task actually working? What about at the ‘Sewing’ task? Show appropriate workings. [3 marks]
4. What is the theoretical flow time of this process? Show appropriate workings. [2 marks]

Suppose a buffer that can hold at most 300 shirts is added between “Cutting” and “Sewing”. Also suppose “Cutting” runs two 8-hour shifts (i.e., 16 hours a day), “Sewing” runs three 8-hour shifts (i.e., 24 hours a day), and “Sewing” will start working after the first item at “Cutting” is finished (i.e., there is no waiting time in “Sewing” at the beginning of the day).

v) What is the maximum level of WIP in the buffer over the course of a day? Show appropriate workings.  [4 marks]
vi) Draw a graph plotting the level of WIP in the buffer against the time of day for 24 hours. You may either neatly hand-draw the graph or use any software of your choice to draw the graph. [5 marks]
vii) Calculate the average level of WIP over 24 hours. Show appropriate workings. [3 marks]

Question 3

There are two common types of errors that explain BPR failures: 

1) Redesign (i.e., improve) the wrong process and 2) fail to redesign the right process. 

a) For each of these two errors, explain what these errors are, and why such errors are problematic in organisations. [5 marks] 
b) Explain how a business can avoid these errors. To get full marks, refer to specific tools or methods discussed in class [5 marks] 

Question 4

An emergency room is trying to improve its patients’ experiences. To guide this, hospital management has surveyed patients and analysed the negative patient feedback. Based on this feedback, they compiled the following data:

1. Hospital management would like to choose one or two categories of complaints to focus on addressing. Which of the charts and diagrams we discussed in class would you recommend they use to help them answer this question? Justify your answer. [5 marks]
2. Is there any additional information you think would be useful in deciding which complaints to focus on? Justify your answer. [5 marks]
3. Based on their analysis of the complaints and the resources available, hospital management has decided they would like to improve patient care by “improving staff communication with patients by providing clearer guidance to staff”. Is this a good way of framing the problem? Justify why or why not. [5 marks]