Exercise 1.6 Consider the following process at a pharmacy.

Exercise 1.6 Consider the following process at a pharmacy.
Customers drop off their prescriptions either in the drive-through counter or in the front
counter of the pharmacy. Customers can request that their prescription be filled immediately.
In this case, they have to wait between 15 minutes and one hour depending on the current
workload. Most customers are not willing to wait that long, so they opt to nominate a pickup
time at a later point during the day. Generally, customers drop their prescriptions in the
morning before going to work (or at lunchtime) and they come back to pick up the drugs
after work, typically between 5pm and 6pm.When dropping their prescription, a technician
asks the customer for the pick-up time and puts the prescription in a box labeled with the
hour preceding the pick-up time. For example, if the customer asks to have the prescription
be ready at 5pm, the technician will drop it in the box with the label 4pm (there is one box
for each hour of the day).
Every hour, one of the pharmacy technicians picks up the prescriptions due to be filled in the
current hour. The technician then enters the details of each prescription (e.g. doctor details,
patient details and medication details) into the pharmacy system. As soon as the details of
a prescription are entered, the pharmacy system performs an automated check called Drug
Utilization Review (DUR). This check is meant to determine if the prescription contains
any drugs that may be incompatible with other drugs that had been dispensed to the same
customer in the past, or drugs that may be inappropriate for the customer taking into account
the customer data maintained in the system (e.g. age).
Any alarms raised during the automated DUR are reviewed by a pharmacist who performs a
more thorough check. In some cases, the pharmacist even has to call the doctor who issued
the prescription in order to confirm it.
After the DUR, the system performs an insurance check in order to determine whether
the customer’s insurance policy will pay for part or for the whole cost of the drugs. In
most cases, the output of this check is that the insurance company would pay for a certain
percentage of the costs, while the customer has to pay for the remaining part (also called
the co-payment). The rules for determining how much the insurance company will pay and
how much the customer has to pay are very complicated. Every insurance company has
different rules. In some cases, the insurance policy does not cover one or several drugs in a
prescription, but the drug in question can be replaced by another drug that is covered by the
insurance policy. When such cases are detected, the pharmacist generally calls the doctor
and/or the patient to determine if it is possible to perform the drug replacement.
Once the prescription passes the insurance check, it is assigned to a technician who collects
the drugs from the shelves and puts them in a bag with the prescription stapled to it. After
the technician has filled a given prescription, the bag is passed to the pharmacist who double-checks that the prescription has been filled correctly. After this quality check, the
pharmacist seals the bag and puts it in the pick-up area. When a customer arrives to pick up
a prescription, a technician retrieves the prescription and asks the customer for payment in
case the drugs in the prescription are not (fully) covered by the customer’s insurance.
With respect to the above process, consider the following questions:
1. What type of process is the above one: order-to-cash, procure-to-pay or issue-toresolution?
2. Who are the actors in this process?
3. What value does the process deliver to its customer(s)?
4. What are the possible outcomes of this process?
5. Taking the perspective of the customer, what performance measures can be attached
to this process?
6. What potential issues do you foresee this process might have? What information
would you need to collect in order to analyze these issues?
7. What possible changes do you think could be made to this process in order to
address the above issues?

Exercise 1.7 Consider the following process at a company of around 800 employees.
A purchase request is initiated when an employee at the company fills in and signs a form
on paper. The purchase request includes information about the good to be purchased, the
quantity, the desired delivery date, the approximate cost. The employee can also nominate
a specific vendor. Employees often request quotes from vendors in order to get the required
information. Completing the entire form can take a few days as the requestor often does
not have the required data. The quote is attached to the purchase request. This completed
request is signed by two supervisors. One supervisor has to provide a financial approval,
while the other supervisor has to approve the necessity of the purchase and its conformance
with company’s policy (e.g. does a requested software form part of the standard operating
environment?). Collecting the signatures from the two supervisors takes on average five
days. If it is urgent, the employee can hand-deliver the form, otherwise it is circulated via
internal mail. A rejected purchase request is returned to the employee. Some employees
make some minor modifications and try in a second attempt other supervisors in order to
get approval.
Once a purchase request is approved, it is returned to the employee who initiated the purchase
requisition. The employee then forwards the form to the Purchasing Department.
Many employees make a copy of the form for their own record, in case the form gets lost.
The central purchasing Department checks the completeness of the purchase request and
returns it to the employee if it is incomplete.
Based on attached quotes and other information, the purchasing Department enters the approved
purchase request into the company’s Enterprise System. If the employee has not
nominated any vendors, a clerk at the purchasing Department will select one based either
on the quotes attached to the purchase requisition, or based on the list of vendors (also called
Master Vendor List) available in the company’s Enterprise System.
Sometimes the initial quote attached to the request has expired in the meantime. In this
case, updated quote is requested from the corresponding vendor. In other cases, the vendor who submitted the quote is not recorded in the company’s Enterprise System. In this case,
the purchasing Department should give preference to other vendors who are registered in
the Enterprise System. If no such vendors are available or if the registered vendors offer
higher prices than the one in the submitted quote, the purchasing Department can add the
new vendor into the Enterprise System.
When a vendor is selected, a purchase order is automatically generated by the Enterprise
System. Then, a fax is generated and sent to the vendor. A copy of the purchase order is
sent to Accounts Payable Office, which is part of the Financial Department, which uses an
accounting system that is not integrated with the Enterprise System.
The goods are always delivered to the Goods Receipt Department.When a good is received,
a clerk at this Department selects the corresponding purchase order in the Enterprise System.
The clerk checks the quantity and quality and (in the positive case) generates a document
called goods receipt form from the purchase order stored in the Enterprise System. The
goods are then forwarded to the employee who initiated the purchase requisition. A printout
of the goods receipt form is sent to the Accounts Payable Office. If there are any issues
with the good, it is returned to the vendor and a paper-based note is sent to the Purchasing
Department and to the Accounts Payable Office.
The vendor eventually sends the invoice directly to the Accounts Payable Office. A clerk
at this office compares the purchase order, the goods receipt and the invoice—a task that is
usually called “three-way matching”. Three-way matching can be quite time-consuming. If
there are any discrepancies as it has to be investigated, if it was an error of the vendor or
a data entry error. The duration of the payment process unfortunately takes sometimes so
long that the discount for paying in a certain period expires.
A bank transfer is finally triggered and a payment notice is sent to the vendor. Some vendors
explicitly indicate in their invoice the bank account number where they want the transfer
to occur. It may happen that the bank account number and name indicated in the invoice
differs from the one recorded in the vendor database. Sometimes payments bounce back, in
which case the vendor is contacted by phone, e-mail or postal mail. If new bank details are
given, the transfer is attempted again. If the issue is still not resolved, the Accounts Payable
Office has to contact again the vendor in order to trace the cause of the bounced payment.
1. What type of process is the above one: order-to-cash, procure-to-pay or issue-toresolution?
2. Who are the actors in this process? Who is/are the customer(s)?
3. What value does the process deliver to its customer(s)?
4. What are the possible outcomes of this process?
5. Taking the perspective of the customer, what performance measures can be attached
to this process?
6. What potential issues do you foresee this process might have? What information
would you need to collect in order to analyze these issues?
7. What possible changes do you think could be made to this process in order to
address the above issues?

Exercise 2.8 A university provides education and services to its students. This starts
with admission of students to the university. When a regular student, i.e. a student
who comes from a Dutch high-school, sends in his admission form such a student is
registered by the admissions office. Subsequently, the eligibility to study in a certain
program is checked based on the information that the student provided on his admission
form. For students who arrive from another school, such as a polytechnic,
the previous study that the student took, according to his admission form, must be
examined in detail. Polytechnic students can either come to the university after completing
one year of courses (propedeuse) or after receiving a polytechnic diploma.
Students from universities in other countries are also accepted. Also for them, the
studies that they took previously must be examined in detail. When students are
considered eligible and the courses that they have already followed (if applicable)
check out, they are enrolled at the university, which involves sending a letter that
they are accepted and entering the details of their enrollment in the information system
of the university. The students then become a student of their respective study:
industrial engineering, building or construction engineering.
After the students are enrolled, they can take courses or do projects and they can
use the services that are provided by the university, which include: language training
and sports facilities. Projects are done on an individual basis by a student together
with a lecturer. The university recognizes part-time students who do their studies
while they are working in a company. These students typically do projects of a more
practical nature than the other students, such that the process that is followed during
the project are also different for these students.
Design a process architecture as follows:
1. identify the case types that should appear in the process architecture
2. identify the functions that should appear in the process architecture
3. draw a case/function matrix
4. identify the processes in the case function matrix, split up processes if and only if
one of the guidelines applies, clearly indicate which guideline you applied where

Exercise 2.9 A consultancy firm provides consultancy, outsourcing, and interim
management services. The firm considers acquisition of projects as part of those
services. Acquisition can both be done for existing clients and for new clients, because
it concerns acquisition of projects rather than clients. Acquisition is typically
started at ‘networking events’ by partners of the consultancy firm. It is handled
according to a fixed procedure, but no standard document is used. When a client
shows interest in a consultancy service, an intake is done with the client. To maintain
a long-term relationship with clients as much as possible, the firm will always try to establish a framework contract with new clients during the intake. For existing
clients a framework contract does not have to be established. As another form
of relationship management, regular meetings are held with existing clients. During
these meetings the client’s organization is discussed with the client. This enables
the client to decide whether additional work should be done to further improve the
organization. At the same time this enables the firm to bring in additional assignments.
The intake and the regular meetings happen according to the same form, on
which an inventory of the client’s wishes can be made.
For consultancy and outsourcing services, a project team must be created directly
after a project assignment was given to the consultancy firm. After a project team is
created, there is a kick-off meeting with the client and after the kick-off meeting, the
project is executed. The kick-off meeting is the same for each type of project, but
the way in which the project is executed differs largely per type of service. At the
end of the project there always is an evaluation meeting with the client as a means of
quality control. The creation of the project team, the kick-off meeting, the execution
of the project and the evaluation of the project happen according to a project plan.
The consultancy company has a services department, which takes care of market
research for the consultants, manages the leasing of cars and provides secretary
services.
Design a process architecture as follows:
1. identify the case types that should appear in the process architecture
2. identify the functions that should appear in the process architecture
3. draw a case/function matrix
4. identify the processes in the case function matrix; split processes if and only if
one of the guidelines applies and indicate which guideline you applied where