Gargi has been a Customer Service Representative $($CSR$)$ for a Health Insurance company for almost three years now.

Her clients are Plan Administrators for small to mid$-$sized companies. She has an active job, and she interacts with Sales,

Marketing, Plan Setup, Plan Administration and Underwriting teams in addition to her clients and Sales brokers $($called

$$advisors$).$

Her day$-$to$-$day responsibilities include:

$$ Providing client education during site visits.

$$ Completing reporting requests.

$$ Responding to service inquiries and escalations.

$$ Processing policy adjustment requests.

In general, she spends half of her time fielding service issues such as delayed reimbursements, or new customer plan

setups.

If we set up a new Plan correctly the first time, Gargi thinks she could spend significantly less time on service issues.

When she is on a site visit for several days, she worries that an urgent service issue may arise from another client. She

cannot immediately respond about the impact on that client's customer experience. She also thinks the process for

making plan adjustments is not consistent $$ at times the Sales team negotiate with the client and$/$or advisor and sends

an email with the entire back & forth of the conversation. She must review the entire email to understand what the

policy adjustment request is asking for. She thinks this may lead to plan setup errors. Often, she needs to go back to the

Salesperson with questions. This can be time$-$consuming as Salespeople are very busy traveling while making sales and

they don't always respond promptly to email or phone calls.

Sometimes the Advisor or Client contacts her directly, by$-$passing Sales team and so she gathers their requirements

directly. Once she has identified the requirements, she enters the details by logging into the Policy Adjustment system

called $$Adjust$2$Plan$$ the company's proprietary system. Adjust$2$Plan will keep the policy details for each client. $.$

Some Sales representatives expect SRs to clarify rates with Underwriter where other Salespeople do it themselves.

Updates to $$UWrite$2$Plan$,$ another proprietary software, is used to communicate with Underwriter for middle$-$tier mid$-$size

clients but not used for large Corporate Clients $($a standardized email is used instead$).$

Gargi thinks her role is not well defined, and there are overlaps with roles within Encanada$$s Group Offices. Although she

thinks Adjust$2$Plan serves the function of being a consistent requirement gathering tool, it has its issues: there are too

many input forms in Adjust$2$Plan and it is sometimes difficult to determine which one to use; there are too many fields

within each form and sometimes she can't find the right field and uses free form text to enter the requirements. Gargi

thinks the free$-$form text is a source of error as this allows for interpretation by Plan Setup Specialists.

When the Policy Adjustment is complete, Gargi makes a document compare as a means of Quality Control. She knows

that she is not expected to do QC$,$ but she does what she thinks is good for her client. She is aware that not all her peers

do QC$.$

Her final actions for Policy adjustments are to communicate to the client that the Adjustment work is done and send them

the booklet, contract details and Adjustment notice. Gargi is that this is another difference $$ in some cases, the Plan

setup team contacts the Client and$/$or Advisor directly when New Policy work is complete.

Gargi feels her role needs to be well defined and the entire end to end process needs to be evaluated to successfully

meet our client needs, improve quality, and reduce Turn Around Time$($TAT$).$

Now that you are familiar with the eight forms of waste, Mura and Muri in Lean, think of the scenario and identify specific

examples of waste in the process.

$1.$ Use the following $3$ questions to identify wastes.

a$.$ Is the customer willing to pay for it $($Does it fulfill a customer's need or preference$)?$

b$.$ Does it provides$/$change the product or service in some way?

c$.$ Is it done right the first time in the process?

Describe the Process Step which you consider as

waste

Type of Waste Explanation

$2.$ What is the constraint of the process? Please explain your reasoning.

$3.$ Where do we have opportunity to standardize the process? Explain your steps.

Muda$($Waste$)$:

Defects $$ Flaws in a product or service that will lead to either scrapping or reworking the product$/$service$.$

Overproduction $$ Creating more than what is needed by the customer or building up inventory.

Waiting $$ Time that's spent waiting for another process to finish before you can start. be waiting for raw material or for

information to be relayed or reports to be compiled.

Non$-$utilized talent $-$ This is the waste from not using the skills, talents, and creativity of employees to get them involved

in process improvement efforts.

Transportation $$ The movement of a product $/$service or