Background: You are a consultant and are asked to look at a problem facing a tax return preparation company. Customer complaints are soaring due to many issues such as; returns are started later than quoted, returns take longer than quoted to be completed, missing forms, and inaccurate billing statements. These issues appear to vary over time workload, and among employees, and error rates are much higher than the service level agreements promised. This level of complaints is believed to be affecting sales and future revenue.

 

Tax analysts were asked in a team meeting what the issues were and the following comments were made.

1) The work orders are often incorrect and have to be sent back to sales to get the corrected, which delays start time of a return

2) Software is slowing down as work load increased and adding to the job cycle time

3) Finished returns sit for days before billing sends them out for customer review.

4) Analysts have reported social media content with bad reviews

 

As a member of a team, you are the Green Belt assigned to lead the team and evaluate the issues and report back to management on your findings.

 

Data that is available to your team:

Customer Satisfaction Issues	Quantity
Start Date vs promises	514
Completed return date	415
Inaccurate billing	115
Missing forms	31
Aged customer response	70
Misc. Random items.	20
Total Complaints	1165

 

Return #	Delayed Start
1	0.5
2	1
3	2.5
4	2
5	2
6	2.5
7	2
8	2.5
9	3
10	1
11	3.5
12	2
13	2
14	2
15	2.5
16	2.5
17	1.5
18	3
19	2
20	2
21	4
22	2
23	2
24	1.5
25	2
26	3
27	4
28	3.5
29	1.5
30	0.5

 

 

 

Return #	Total Cycle Time (days)
1	15
2	13
3	14
4	10
5	21
6	17
7	19
8	14
9	29
10	13
11	19
12	18
13	15
14	19
15	33
16	18
17	20
18	10
19	27
20	16
21	11
22	16
23	10
24	31
25	38
26	17
27	12
28	30
29	12
30	28

 

Use the DMAIC model from the course material to create a solution.

 

Define:

1. Write a problem statement for the work you are considering.

 

Measure:

1. Determine the measures that you would want to put in place to monitor the performance of your process.

 

Analyze:

1. A Pareto chart of customer complaints.

2. A histogram to determine if cycle time is a normal distributed.

3. A control chart for cycle time.

 

Improve:

1. Create a revised SIPOC or future state value map to show proposed improvements in the process that will result in improved customer satisfaction.

 

Control:

1. Write a response plan describing actions when process goes out of control.

 

Define – Exercise 1: Problem Statement Development

Utilizing he course material and class training propose a problem statement for the effort that you are going to address.

 

Measure – Exercise 1: Determine the measures

Normally you would follow the following steps as indicated in the class material:

 

1. Value Stream Map – create and verify a value stream map for the process

2. Create a data collection plan – How are you going to collect the necessary data for process times, information flow, etc.

3. Collect data – collect the necessary data to establish baseline performance of the process

4. Complete the Value Stream Map – utilize the data to complete the value stream map

5. Calculate Lead Time – compare the lead time of the process to the customer requirements

6. Perform a process capability evaluation – Cp / Cpk

 

For this exercise, utilizing the problem statement and what you know about the case to develop a few key measures relating to the process and output.

 

 

Key Measures:

Process:

Outputs

 

Analyze – Exercise 1: Create a Pareto chart of total customer complaints for the data supplied.

What can you conclude from the Pareto chart?

Which projects would you work on first and why?

 

Analyze – Exercise 2: Build a histogram to determine if delay in project start delay is a normally distributed? Returns sent to analysts first thing in the morning or after lunch.

 

1. Construct a histogram for the data above.

 

2. Is the distribution normal? Run Normality test

 

3. What would you recommend to management?

Analyze – Exercise 3: Using the Return Cycle time data below.

 

Create:

1) Histogram

2) X bar R Chart

3) During the management review after seeing these charts, management decides that they want to keep cycle time between 15-18 days based upon complexity and quote that to customers. What would you recommend to them?

 

Improve – Exercise 1:

 

Normally the process for improvement includes:

 

1. Generate potential solutions – Utilize the root causes analysis (from analyze phase) to identify a range of solutions

2. Evaluate the alternatives – The team should be open to combining ideas, pilot testing, experimenting to find the best alternatives

3. Develop a future state value stream map – redraw a value stream map to reflect the way the process “should be”

Based upon what you know of the case, what improvements would you recommend for return cycle time?

 

Proposals may include: quality checks, training, and elimination of unnecessary work, new tools.

Use one of the improvement tools in the course material that may apply or a simple list. Cover Goals, process flow changes, procedure changes, monitoring.

Control: Management wants to have a response plan when things are going out of control. They want corrective actions for the process and customer communication to be part of it. Develop response plan.

 

Utilizing the data (where possible) from (Analyze Exercise 3), write a response plan. Note: Use common sense and customer sensitivity to determine what good actions would be. Solutions have a technical component and a customer satisfaction component using technical data as a starting point for actions.