In this week, we cover Business Processes, including Process Improvement through streamlining and re-engineering and process modeling of both the As-Is and the To-Be processes. Students were asked: Drawing from your own experience, select a process (a set of specified steps to accomplish a task) used at your place of work or in an interaction with a business that you would like to see improved and briefly describe the process. Be sure you have identified a specific process rather than a general business problem or area. Explain why you picked that process. Explain the steps you might take to analyze how to improve the process. Who should be involved with you? What are some of the questions you should ask about the current process? How will you know if the process was actually improved? Student answered: In the organization I work for we have what they call a race series. This section of the organization holds races. One process that is performed in during these events is the obtaining of signatures for a Hold Harmless Agreement (HHA). This agreement is a requirement for all participants to prevent lawsuits for any injuries incurred while running said race. The current process for collecting the HHA is as follows: participants register and pay for the race Participants show up on race day Unknown number of copies of HHA are printed to account for participants and day of sign-ups. Participants sign a paper copy of a hold harmless agreement upon entrance to race Agreement is held onto until following work day (typically 1-2 days) and handed in to administrative staff the following Monday to alphabetize, scan and upload to the company database. Once uploaded the HHA's are shredded. From an operations management standpoint, this process requires extra staffing at and after events in order to complete the task. It also wastes materials when printing an unknown number of copies and having to toss the ones not used. To improve the process there are a few changes that could be made. When a participant registers for a race event, they could sign the HHA electronically during the registration process. Once signed the program could send the HHA to the database automatically. Another area that could be improved, is for people who register day of at the event, instead of having 2 staff in place to help keep the HHA line moving, you could 1 staff and 2 iPads or tablets. These devices could have the HHA on them so that participants could sign them, and they would be sent directly to the database as soon as you hit the enter button. This would help to alleviate the staff needed and cut down on the steps needed to complete the process. A list of the process once improved is below: Participant registers and signs HHA HHA goes directly to database One staff member makes sure they have the devices charged and ready to go for day of registration. As you can see, by making these changes you have lessened the number of steps in the process, lessened the number of staff needed at the event, and lowered your costs overall. Questions Assess whether the post accurately and sufficiently addresses the questions asked in the discussion topic. Incorporating additional research will strengthen your responds. Assess whether the information is correct or not, and/or complete, and provide correct information to enhance the discussion.