A catalog order-filling process can be described as follows: [Modeled after an example in Soren Bisgaard and Johannes Freiesleben. “Six Sigma and the Bottom Line,” Quality Progress, Vol. 37, No. 9, September 2004, 57-62.] Telephone orders are taken over a 12-hour period each day. Orders are collected from each person at the end of the day and checked for errors by the supervisor of the phone department, usually the following morning. The supervisor does not send each one-day batch of orders to the data processing department until after 1:00 p.m. In the next step—data processing—orders are invoiced in the one-day batches. Then they are printed and matched back to the original orders. At this point, if the order is from a new customer, it is sent to the person who did the customer verification and setup of new customer accounts. This process must be completed before the order can be invoiced. The next step—order verification and proofreading—occurs after invoicing is completed. The orders, with invoices attached, are given to a person who verifies that all required information is present and correct to permit typesetting. If the verifier has any questions, they are checked by computer or by calling the customer. Finally, the completed orders are sent to the typesetting department of the print shop.
a. Develop a flowchart for this process (see Chapter 7).
b. Identify opportunities for improving the process using lean principles.