Discussion Questions:

1. Establish a project Charter for Jeff based on the assignment given to him by Grace Monroe.

2. Draw a process map (swim lanes for each role) that describe the proposal creation process from the initial requestsent in by the seller to a completed proposal handed back to the seller. This will enable Jeff to define the existing process and get a better sense of process handoffs. Be detailed in your process map. Assume that the process is consistent across geographies.

3. Superimpose the average time it takes for each step in the process along with the endtoend cycle time. As you create this baseline metric, are there any considerations that you should make to account for geography and brand?

4. Gentech has an internal service level agreement (SLA). Any transaction that takes longer than 55 days is considered a defect. Based on this information what is the current dpmo and sigma level that Gentech is functioning at?

5. Do all Brands and geographies perform the same or are there certain brands and geographiesthat outperform their counterparts? You must present your arguments with supporting visualization. Jeff is interested in this data so that he could share best practices and benchmark internally. You can utilize Tableau (or any other visualization tool) to present your findings.

6. Analyze the timestamp data, what are the major root causes for long cycle time?

7. Are there any particularsellers and Bid Support Staff that perform better than their counterparts? Are there some that perhaps perform poorly?

8. Is there a correlation between bid complexity and cycle time? Comment on this relationship.

9. Utilizing LSS tools e.g. Pareto Charts, Fishbone, VA/NVA, FMEA highlight potential issues with the process and narrow in on the ones that you think Jeff needs to focus on the most. You can also utilize the text data provided to uncover any major detractors to cycle time.

10. Make recommendations on how you might improve the process? Please be detailed while answering this question. While you generate recommendations, you are also encouraged to think out of the box.

11. How would you ensure that the recommendations you have suggested are working? What is your control plan?

Additional Questions (only require qualitative responses)

1. Based on the existing dataset, could you predict the cycle time of a proposal based on various data attributes/features presented? You are not required to build a predictive model, but perhaps discuss approaches that you could use to generate the prediction.

2. In the dataset provided, seller feedback and BSS feedback for each transaction have been summarized for you. Comment on how you think Jeff could utilize open text data to retrieve valuable insight that pertains to the BSS and seller sentiment. You are not required to perform the analysis but perhaps describe methods that could be used to extract knowledge from text based data.