A recent process improvement initiative at a large organization has analyzed various steps in its business operations and has determined that the process of obtaining the initial information of customers should be standardized. The organization is targeting to keep the time taken for this step at 35 seconds with +/- 5 seconds of tolerance. From the data collected, it is determined that the current process is actually taking 34 seconds on an average per customer and the standard deviation of time taken is 1.5 seconds. (NOTE: For Z-value, round it with 2^nd decimal accuracy and use the table towards the end of the textbook.) (Standard deviation for 95% = 1.645, and for 99% = 2.326

1. Suppose the organization has two options to improve the existing process further.

Option A: Reduce the standard deviation of process time by 0.1 sec (no change in mean)

Option B: Increase the mean process time by 0.5 sec (no change in standard deviation)

Assume that both options are equally expensive and have same degree of difficulty to implement. Which one would you select and why? Hint: Provide analytical reasoning using appropriate measures.

1. The process improvement initiative also insists that organization should use both mean chart (X-bar chart) and range chart (R chart) simultaneously. Explain why these two control charts should be used simultaneously.