CHAPTER 4 product may require more initial inputs, and may prove to be

PROCESS DESIGN inefficient in the latter part of its use, when the latest products
use less energy or maintenance to run.
WHAT IS PROCESS DESIGN? The end-of-life of the product. (Will the redundant product be
difficult to dispose of in an environmentally friendly way? Could
To ‘design’ is to conceive the looks, arrangement, and it be recycled or used as a source of energy? Could it still be
workings of something before it is created. In that sense it is a useful in third-world conditions? Could it be used to benefit the
conceptual exercise. Yet it is one which must deliver a solution environment, such as old cars being used to make artificial
that will work in practice. reefs for sea life?)
Design is also an activity that can be approached at different Process types – the volume–variety effect on process
levels of detail. One may envisage the general shape and design
intention of something before getting down to defining its • Different operations, even those in the same
details. This is certainly true for process design. At the start of operation, may adopt different types of processes.
the process design activity, it is important to understand the • The position of a process on the volume–variety
design objectives, especially at first, when the overall shape continuum shapes its overall design and the general
and nature of the process is being decided. approach to managing its activities. These ‘general
approaches’ to designing and managing processes
WHAT OBJECTIVES SHOULD PROCESS DESIGN HAVE? are called process types. Different terms are
The whole point of process design is to make sure that the sometimes used to identify process types depending
performance of the process is appropriate for whatever it is on whether they are predominantly manufacturing or
trying to achieve. For example, if an operation competed service processes, and there is some variation in the
primarily on its ability to respond quickly to customer requests, terms used.
its processes would need to be designed to give fast
throughput times. This would minimize the time between Project processes
customers requesting a service or product and their receiving • Project processes are those which deal with discrete,
it. Similarly, if an operation competed on low price, cost-related usually highly customized products. Often the
objectives would dominate its process design. Some kind of timescale of making the product or service is relatively
logic should link what the operation as a whole is attempting to long, as is the interval between the completion of
achieve and the performance objectives of its individual each product or service. So low volume and high
processes. variety are characteristics of project processes.

Jobbing processes also deal with very high variety and low
volumes. Whereas in product has resources devoted more or
less exclusively to it, in jobbing processes each product has to
share the operation’s resources with many others. The
resources of the operation will process a series of products but,
although all the products will require the same kind of attention,
each will differ in its exact needs. project processes each

Batch processes
Batch processes can often look like jobbing processes, but
batch does not have quite the degree of variety associated with
jobbing. As the name implies, each time batch processes
produce a product they produce more than one. So each part
of the operation has periods when it is repeating itself, at least
while the ‘batch’ is being processed. The size of the batch
It is common for more ‘micro’ performance flow objectives to be could be just two or three, in which case the batch process will
used that describe process flow performance. For example: differ little from jobbing, especially if each batch is a totally
Throughput rate (or flow rate) is the rate at which units novel product.
emerge from the process, i.e. the number of units passing
through the process per unit of time. Mass processes
Throughput time is the average elapsed time taken for inputs Mass processes are those which produce goods in high
to move through the process and become outputs. volume and relatively narrow variety – narrow, that is, in terms
The number of units in the process (also called the ‘work in of the fundamentals of the product design.
process’ or in-process inventory), as an average over a period
of time. Continuous processes
The utilization of process resources is the proportion of Continuous processes are one step beyond mass processes
available time that the resources within the process are insomuch as they operate at even higher volume and often
performing useful work. have even lower variety. They also usually operate for longer
periods of time. Sometimes they are literally continuous in that
ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE DESIGN their products are inseparable, being produced in an endless
• With the issues of environmental protection becoming flow. Continuous processes are often associated with relatively
more important, both process and service/product inflexible, capital-intensive technologies with highly predictable
designers have to take account of ‘green’ issues. flow.
Interest has focused on some fundamental issues:
• The sources of input to a service or product. (Will they Professional services
damage rainforests? Will they use up scarce Professional services are defined as high contact organizations
minerals? Will they exploit the poor or use child where customers spend a considerable time in the service
labor?) process. Such services provide high levels of customization,
• Quantities and sources of energy consumed in the the service process being highly adaptable in order to meet
process. (Do plastic beverage bottles use more individual customer needs. A great deal of staff time is spent in
energy than glass ones? Should waste heat be the front office and contact staff are given considerable
recovered and used in fish farming?) discretion in servicing customers. Professional services tend to
• The amounts and type of waste material that are be people-based rather than equipment-based, with emphasis
created in the processes. (Can this waste be recycled placed on the process (how the service is delivered) rather
efficiently, or must it be burnt or buried in landfill sites? than the ‘product’ (what is delivered).
Will the waste have a long-term impact on the
environment as it decomposes and escapes?) Service shops
Service shops are characterized by levels of customer contact,
ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE DESIGN (continued) customization, volumes of customers and staff discretion,
The life of the product itself. It is argued that if a product has a which position them between the extremes of professional and
useful life of, say, twenty years, it will consume fewer resources mass services. Service is provided via mixes of front- and
than one that only lasts five years, which must therefore be back-office activities.
replaced four times in the same period. However, the long-life
 of these stages is not working correctly, for example because
some equipment is faulty, the whole operation is affected.
Mass services
Mass services have many customer transactions, involving Scientific management
limited contact time and little customization. Such services may Related to the division of labour are the ideas of ‘scientific’
be equipment based and ‘product’-oriented, with most value management. The term scientific management became
added in the back office and relatively little judgment applied by established in 1911 with the publication of the book of the
front-office staff. Staff are likely to have a closely defined same name by Fredrick Taylor (this whole approach to job
division of labour and to follow set procedures. design is sometimes referred to, pejoratively, as Taylorism).

The product–process matrix Designing the human interface – ergonomic workplace

Making comparisons between different processes along a design
spectrum which goes, for example, from shipbuilding at one
extreme to electricity generation at the other has limited value. Ergonomics is concerned primarily with the physiological
No one grumbles that yachts are so much more expensive aspects of job design. Physiology is about the way the body
than electricity. The real point is that because the different functions. It involves two aspects: firstly, how a person
process types overlap, organizations often have a choice of interfaces with his or her immediate working area; secondly,
what type of process to employ. This choice will have how people react to environmental conditions. Ergonomics is
consequences to the operation, especially in terms of its cost sometimes referred to as human factors engineering or just
and flexibility.   ‘human factors’.

The classic representation of how cost and flexibility vary with Job commitment – behavioral approaches to job design
process choice is the product–process matrix that comes Processes which are designed purely on division of labor,
from Professors Hayes and Wheelwright of Harvard scientific management or even purely ergonomic principles can
University. They represent process choices on a matrix with the alienate the people performing them. Process design should
volume–variety as one dimension, and process types as the also take into account the desire of individuals to fulfill their
other (our matrix has been updated to incorporate both product needs for self-esteem and personal development. This is
and service operations). Figure below shows their matrix where motivation theory and its contribution to the behavioral
adapted to fit with the terminology used here. Most operations approach to process design is important. This achieves two
stick to the ‘natural’ diagonal of the matrix, and few, if any, important objectives. Firstly, it provides jobs which have an
are found in the extreme corners of the matrix. However, intrinsically higher quality of working life – an ethically desirable
because there is some overlap between the various process end in itself. Secondly, because of the higher levels of
types, operations might be positioned slightly off the diagonal. motivation it engenders, it is instrumental in achieving better
performance for the operation, in terms of both the quality and
the quantity of output.
Some of the job characteristics that are held to have a positive
effect on job satisfaction are as follows.

Job rotation
If increasing the number of related tasks in the job is
constrained in some way, for example by the technology of the
process, one approach may be to encourage job rotation. This
means moving individuals periodically between different sets of
tasks to provide some variety in their activities.
Job enlargement
The most obvious method of achieving at least some of the
objectives of behavioral job design is by allocating a larger
HUMAN IMPLICATIONS FOR PROCESS DESIGN number of tasks to individuals. If these extra tasks are broadly
Task allocation – the division of labour of the same type as those in the original job, the change is
The idea of the division of labour – dividing the total task down called job enlargement.
into smaller parts, was first formalized as a concept by the
economist Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations in 1746. Job enrichment
  Job enrichment not only means increasing the number of
There are some real advantages in division of labour: tasks, but also allocating extra tasks which involve more
It promotes faster learning. It is obviously easier to learn how to decision making, greater autonomy and greater control over
do a relatively short and simple task than a long and complex the job.
one.
Automation becomes easier. Dividing a total task into small Empowerment
parts raises the possibility of automating some of those small Empowerment is usually taken to mean more than simple
tasks. autonomy. Whereas autonomy means giving staff the ability to
Reduced non-productive work. This is probably the most change how they do their jobs, empowerment means giving
important benefit of division of labour. In large, complex tasks staff the authority to make changes to the job itself, as well as
the proportion of time spent picking up tools and materials, how it is performed. This can be designed into jobs to different
putting them down again and generally finding, positioning and degrees.
searching can be very high indeed (called non-productive
elements of work). But in shorter, divided, tasks non-productive Team-working
work can be considerably reduced, which would be very A development in job design which is closely linked to the
significant to the costs of the operation. empowerment concept is that of team-based work organization
(sometimes called self-managed work teams). This is where
There are also serious drawbacks to highly divided jobs: staff, often with overlapping skills, collectively performs a
Monotony. The shorter the task, the more often operators will defined task and have a high degree of discretion over how
need to repeat it. Repeating the same task, for example every they actually perform the task.
30 seconds, eight hours a day and five days a week, can
hardly be called a fulfilling job.
Physical injury. The continued repetition of a very narrow range
of movements can, in extreme cases, lead to physical injury.
The over-use of some parts of the body (especially the arms,
hands and wrists) can result in pain and a reduction in physical
capability.
Low flexibility. Dividing a task up into many small parts often
gives the job design a rigidity which is difficult to change under
changing circumstances.
Poor robustness. Highly divided jobs imply customers,
materials or information passing between several stages. If one