GM504 Unit 3 Delivery Order Process Map Example

Nine Steps on Paper, Seventeen on the Dock: A Unit 3 Process Map of a Contractor Delivery Order

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GM504: Organizational Excellence and Change

Unit 3 Process Map

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Ridgeway Building Supply, its staff and every time and count are composite and illustrative; the methods cited are real.

How the Map Was Built

The map follows 24 delivery orders from entry to signed delivery over five days at the main branch, chosen to include phone, counter and email orders, cash and account customers and both same-day and next-day deliveries. For each step I noted the person responsible, the minutes of actual work and the minutes the order sat idle afterward. The written procedure, a two-page document last revised four years ago, served as the comparison. Swim-lane maps of this kind make handoffs visible, since each lane belongs to one role and every arrow between lanes is a point where work changes hands (Damelio, 2011).

The Map

The map runs across six lanes: inside sales, the credit desk, dispatch, yard pickers, loaders and drivers. Each box shows two numbers, minutes of work and minutes waiting before the next step.

Inside sales. An order begins when a clerk keys it from a phone call, an email or a contractor at the counter (step 1). For account customers, the clerk checks whether the requested items are in stock by calling the yard, because the system's stock figures are often wrong (step 2, unwritten). The clerk then releases the order to the credit desk (step 3).

Credit desk. The credit clerk checks the account's balance and terms (step 4). Orders that exceed a limit wait for the controller's approval, usually until the next morning (step 5, unwritten; the procedure says holds are cleared within the hour).

Dispatch. At 6:00 a.m. each day, dispatch prints every next-day pick ticket, whether or not credit has been released (step 6, unwritten). The dispatcher sorts tickets by route and truck (step 7) and places them in the yard's pick bins (step 8). When credit is later released, a second copy is printed and the first is supposed to be discarded (step 9, unwritten).

Yard pickers. A picker takes a ticket and pulls the items from the bins the system lists (step 10). When a bin is empty or holds the wrong item, the picker searches the overflow area (step 11, unwritten) or asks the yard lead, who may agree a substitution, such as a different brand of underlayment, without telling inside sales (step 12, unwritten). The picker stages the order in a lane (step 13).

Loaders. A loader moves staged orders onto the truck in reverse route order (step 14). If an item is missing, the loader sends it back to the picker or adds it from stock on the dock (step 15, unwritten).

Drivers. The driver delivers, counts the items with the customer and collects a signature (step 16). If the customer rejects an item, the driver writes a note on the ticket, which reaches the billing clerk the next day and triggers a credit memo or a return trip (step 17, unwritten as a formal step).

Figure 2: The Summary Strip

Beneath the map, a strip in the style of a value stream map summarizes time (Rother & Shook, 1999). Average lead time from order entry to truck departure for next-day orders is about nineteen hours. Of that, roughly forty minutes is anyone working on the order. The rest is waiting: overnight for the print run, for credit release and for a picker to reach the ticket.

An order spends about forty minutes being worked on and more than eighteen hours waiting, and three of the longest waits sit at steps the written procedure does not mention.

The Eight Unwritten Steps

Eight steps are missing from the written procedure, marked with red flags on the map. They fall into three kinds.

Workarounds for bad data. The phone check on stock (step 2), the overflow search (step 11) and the dock-side addition (step 15) exist because the inventory system's locations and counts cannot be trusted. Each costs time, and the overflow search is where the wrong item most often enters the order.

Workarounds for timing. The 6:00 a.m. print run (step 6) and the reprint after credit release (step 9) exist so that pickers have work at the start of the shift. But printing before credit is released means some tickets are picked and later canceled, and reprinting sometimes leaves two copies of the same ticket in circulation.

Undocumented decisions. The verbal substitution (step 12) and the driver's note on rejected items (step 17) are decisions made outside any system. The substitution is the more serious: the customer receives a product they did not order, and inside sales does not know until the customer calls.

What the Map Suggests

The map does not yet explain why orders go out wrong; that question belongs to the Unit 4 investigation. But it narrows the search, and it shifts attention from individual pickers to the system they work in, where most quality problems originate (Deming, 1986). Three of the eight unwritten steps involve finding or changing items when the system's location record is wrong, which suggests the location record deserves a close look.

Limits

Twenty-four orders over five days at one branch may not represent the other three branches or the busy season. Times were recorded by observation and may be affected by the observer's presence. The written procedure may be outdated in ways staff already know, which would make the comparison overstate the gap.

References

Damelio, R. (2011). The basics of process mapping (2nd ed.). CRC Press.

Deming, W. E. (1986). Out of the crisis. MIT Press.

Rother, M., & Shook, J. (1999). Learning to see: Value stream mapping to add value and eliminate muda. Lean Enterprise Institute.