FOR AMANDA ROSEMARY ONLY

M1,SLP Introduction of OPM, Products, and Productivity

Hello, 

THE FOLLOWING IS DUE: 23 JUL 2017 BY NOON EST.

Deciding what belongs and what doesn’t belong to a process can be challenging. A common cliché states that “Everything is connected to everything else.” Here’s an example. Buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks is connected to:

Making paper products (the cup)

Making paper

The pulpwood industry

Forest management

Climate and climate change

The coffee industry

Production of coffee beans

International trade agreements

Electricity production (for roasting and grinding beans)

We could spin the list out indefinitely; electricity production, for example, is related to the production of fossil fuels, which in turn is affected by the political stability of the Gulf states, etc. But the further afield we go, the less relevance there is to that cup of coffee.

ASSIGNMENT

Think of a specific process you’re familiar with. The process should be sufficiently important to merit improvement, and sufficiently complex to offer room for improvement. Filling a coffee cup, for example, could be considered a process, and may be important, but it’s so simple that it’s difficult to see how it could be improved. On the other hand; running an aircraft repair facility is a process within the larger process of running an Air Force Wing, and while it’s important, it would be too complex for this paper.

Any process is embedded in a context. This is the organization which provides its resources, its inputs, and either consumes or distributes its output.

For this paper, the specific tasks are:

Describe an organization you’re familiar with. Ideally, you’re either working for this organization, or have in the recent past. The description should be detailed enough to support the second task, which is to:

Describe a specific process that takes place within the organization. As noted above, the process should be important enough, and complex enough, to meet the needs of all four SLP assignments. The process description should include, in as much detail as possible,what the process does, the resources dedicated to the process by the organization, the inputs consumed by the process, and the outputs produced by the process.

What sort of improvement could be made in the process? It’s not important to be specific, since Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) envisions incremental changes that take place over an extended period. All that’s required is a general statement, such as “make easier,” “reduce error rate,” or “increase efficiency with respect to the (labor/materials/time) required.”

Bear in mind that resources, inputs, and outputs may consist of materials, products, or services, or any combination thereof.

REQUIRED REFERENCES:

1.  Department of Defense Continuous Process Improvement Transformation Guidebook

PAPER EXPECTATIONS: 

1. DUE: 23 JUL 2017 BY NOON EST.

2. PAPER LENGTH: 2 PAGES. Write what you need to write, neither more nor less. Make each sentence count! (Having said that; it’s unlikely that one page would be enough, and very likely that eight pages would be too 

3. FORMAT: Standard APA Format.

4.  Ensure that your answer reflects your detailed understanding of the theory and techniques mentioned in the required references (see above) in this module.

5. Don't go off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background materials.

6. MAKE SURE TO USE THE LISTED REFERENCE. Make sure additional sources are from reliable and credible sources. Articles published in established newspapers or business journals/magazines are preferred. If you find articles on the Internet, make sure they are from a credible source.