Process Improvement Responses

LA 4-2: Assess the process you have in mind for your Week 8 Assignment. Explain at least 2 potential root causes of waste – also known as non-value-added activity (NVA) – that might be found inside that process. 

Response 1:

The process I'm evaluating for the Week 8 assignment is FY Acquisition Workload Planning.  This is the process by which my acquisition team plans workload for the upcoming fiscal year. 

There are several wasteful areas in this process.  Waste, meaning things or steps that don't increase value (McGee-Abe, 2015).  A couple of those potential waste areas include:

· Overproduction - simply, the folks providing input put every possible nut and bolt they might ever need on the workload planning sheet.  A lot of these procurement efforts never come to fruition as they were a "just-in-case" item.  For the acquisition team, this can mean uneven workload as the total work planned is divvied up with some of the team receiving genuine requirements and some not so much.

· Not-Utilizing Talent - the acquisition team members are experts in the world of procurement.  Prior workload planning requirements were gathered simply by way of an MS Excel spreadsheet sent via email.  The acquisition team skills need to be utilized by more effective means of gathering requirements with the appropriate technical folks.  Engaging in the process will ensure greater and more effective communication and a more thorough/complete workload input.

Response 2:

· Inventory Excess 

· Overproduction

· More customers than product

· Poor management

· Not Utilizing talent

· Poor communication

· poor management

· lack of teamwork

· insufficient training

Both inventory excess and not utilizing talent can be catastrophic mistakes for a business. All management and tasks must be properly configured in order for thesee causes of waste to not occur. Improving communication, management and training are the three must important factors in this waste. If these problems are accounted for then these problems should no longer occur.