Order Management Reengineering At Heatway

Order Management Re plan At HeatwayHeatway Systems lost a lengthy legal battle when a federal jury in Cleveland held Goodyear check come forward Rubber Co. blameless for its role in manufacturing the rubber hose the radiant comp either marketed as Entran II. The jury reached its decision February 3 after three age of deliberation and after three weeks of testimony.Frankly, the outcome of this trial was a surprise to everyone-including Goodyear, if they were honest, Heatway president Mike Chiles said the day after the finding of fact. Chiles had high praise for the try out presented by his Cleveland legal team. During three days of testimony, for example, an expert witness from the Naval Research Laboratory pointed out that Goodyear used inadequate antioxidants, inappropriate volatile plasticizers and rubbishy clay fillers in making the hose. A second expert witness testified that Goodyears failure to properly test the Entran II product for radiant heat purposes guide to the pr oblems.Meanwhile, mechanical contractors from Colorado and Alaska testified that they had employed exactly the same installation methods when installing Heatways other radiant brands-yet entirely experienced problems with Entran II hose.Goodyear argued that the failures were due to Heatways radiant body design, as well as problems with installation and maintenance by contractors. It said that field inspections showed that leaks were caused by the wrong type of hose connectors and that the hose was damaged by highly acidic fluid. In addition, Goodyear said it had been using the same 20-year-old formula to make headway hose for other applications, such as denudate and water hose, without any problems.In a statement about the jurys decision, Goodyear says it is obviously very gratified by the verdict. We always have believed that the Entran II hose was appropriate for use in radiant home heating systems when it was sold.Chiles said the numbers just didnt add up for his side. The ju ry looked at the fact that there had only been 658 cases of failure out of 10,000 installations, he said, and didnt think that was a high enough failure rate. After the verdict, Chiles said his lawyers interviewed the jury and many verbalised the sen sentencent that if there had been two or three times as many cases of failure, we would have won.While Heatway lost this case, Goodyears win may be far from solid. Theyre non out of the woods at all, Chiles said. We have unearthed some ugly internal memos as a result of our discovery bear upon. Its our true belief that Goodyear will pay for this problem-its just going to manage a couple of to a greater extent years and more litigation.Chiles added that the courtroom was packed with plaintiff attorneys from crosswise the country who are in line to sue Goodyear next. Heatway failed on its claim of a breach of implied warranty of merchantability. However, Goodyear still faces a growing number of homeowner claims and will have to fight other legal theories of liability.Heatway bought 25 million feet of the hose between 1989 and 1993. But the hose soon began to crack and leak, causing extensive damages. Entran II tubes started out orange and flexible, like garden hoses. everywhere time, the tube released plasticizers that hardened the tube, effectively dissolving in hot water, according to expert testimony. The first phase of the problem begins with leaks where the hose connects to the manifold, and continues until the tube spontaneously cracks and leaks elsewhere. on that point are about 10,000 radiant heating systems in the Unites States that contain Entran II tubes, and Heatway has spent more than $6.5 million to settle more than 100 claims since 1992.Despite the verdict against Heatway, Denver attorney William Maywhort has advised clients that the Ohio jury verdict for Goodyear does not prevent Colorado residents who have Entran II hose in their homes from suing Goodyear. In fact, suing Goodyear and Heatway d irectly this instant may be the homeowners only option for recovering for the damage caused by Entran II, said Maywhort, who represents more than a dozen Colorado homeowners who have experienced problems with the Entran II hoseWhat is BPR?Business subroutine re-engineering is a strain guidance strategy, originally pioneered in the first 1990s, think on the analysis and design of workflows and forgees within an organization. BPR aimed to admirer organizations fundamentally rethink how they do their work in order to dramatically improve customer service, cut operational costs, and become world-class competitors. In the mid-1990s, as many as 60% of the Fortune 500 companies claimed to either have initiated reengineering efforts, or to have plans to do so.BPR seeks to help companies radically restructure their organizations by centeringing on the ground-up design of their business processes. According to Davenport (1990) a business process is a set of logically related tasks pe rformed to achieve a defined business outcome. Re-engineering emphasized a holistic focus on business objectives and how processes related to them, encouraging full-scale recreation of processes rather than iterative optimization of subprocesses.Business process re-engineering is overly known as business process redesign, business transformation, or business process change management.The role of information technologyInformation technology (IT) has historically played an important role in the reengineering c oncept. It is considered by some as a major enabler for new forms of working and collaborating within an organization and across organizational borderscitation needed.Early BPR literature identified several so called disruptive technologies that were supposed to challenge traditional wisdom about how work should be performed.dual-lane up databases, making information available at many placesExpert systems, allowing generalists to perform specialist tasksTelecommunication netwo rks, allowing organizations to be centralized and decentralized at the same timeDecision-support tools, allowing decision-making to be a part of everybodys jobWireless data communication and portable computers, allowing field personnel to work office independentInteractive videodisk, to energise in immediate contact with potential buyersAutomatic identification and tracking, allowing things to tell where they are, instead of requiring to be foundHigh performance computing, allowing on-the-fly planning and revisioningIn the mid-1990s, especially workflow management systems were considered as a significant contributor to improved process efficiency. Also ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) vendors, such as SAP, JD Edwards, Oracle, PeopleSoft, positioned their solutions as vehicles for business process redesign and improvement.BPR Success Failure FactorsCritiqueMany companies used reengineering as an pretext to downsize their companies dramatically, though this was not the intent of r eengineerings proponents consequently, reengineering earned a reputation for world synonymous with downsizing and layoffs.In many circumstances, reengineering has not always lived up to its expectations. Some prominent reasons includeReengineering assumes that the factor that limits an organizations performance is the ineffectiveness of its processes (which may or may not be true) and offers no means of validating that assumption.Reengineering assumes the need to start the process of performance improvement with a clean slate, i.e. totally pretermit the status quo.According to Eliyahu M. Goldratt (and his Theory of Constraints) reengineering does not provide an effective way to focus improvement efforts on the organizations constraintcitation needed.Others have claimed that reengineering was a recycled buzzword for commonly-held ideas. Abrahamson (1996) argued that fashionable management terms tend to follow a lifecycle, which for Reengineering peaked between 1993 and 1996 (Ponzi and Koenig 2002). They argue that Reengineering was in fact nothing new (as e.g. when Henry Ford holded the lying line in 1908, he was in fact reengineering, radically changing the way of thinking in an organization).The most frequent critique against BPR concerns the strict focus on efficiency and technology and the disregard of people in the organization that is subjected to a reengineering initiative. Very often, the label BPR was used for major workforce reductions. Thomas Davenport, an early BPR proponent, stated thatWhen I wrote about business process redesign in 1990, I explicitly said that using it for cost reduction alone was not a sensible goal. And consultants Michael Hammer and James Champy, the two names most closely associated with reengineering, have insisted all along that layoffs shouldnt be the point. But the fact is, once out of the bottle, the reengineering genie quickly turned ugly.Introduction to CaseProblem before Allan Firestone, president of Heatway Cooper ations Industrial Products Division and Bob Hemphill, a VP charged with designing and implementing a new process.Design and implementation of a new process, named Proposal to payment (PTP) for selling and delivering Heatway products.Change in organizational structure as well as IT architecture, and even a new philosophy of business.Trouble between Hemphill and Firestone over the spending budget, where Hemphill demanded $35 million and Firestone was ready to spend only $15 million.Funding Considerations before FirestoneHow money could be arranged for PTP without sacrificing the profit objectives?Could corporate pay for the rest of amount?Could some of the other international divisions that had expressed interest contribute?Firestone himself believed that PTP was necessary and design for the new process, organization, and technology environment were very exciting.But, the VP had doubts about the urgency to implement PTP.So, firestone resolved to take one more look at the numbers, in hope to find some source of additional savings had been overlooked.Background-Industrial ProductsIndustrial and consumer markets in 27 countries throughout the world.Activities involved heating, ventilation, air conditioning(HVAC) products and services.business heavily dependent on New Construction.IPD sold to medium % large sized businesses.Systems configured to suit the size, location and design of the businesses.Had its own direct-sales engineering groups.Heatway engg worked with architects, contractors and tenants to configure an HVAC solution.Reengineering at heatwayAn early adopter of new approaches to business improvementsQuality based management approaches had been accepted in Manufacturing engineering but lacking in Sales ServiceIn late 1980s radical changes to improvement in contrast to incremental changes using IT.Sought order-of-magnitude improvements inTime apostrophizeQualityDesigningFirst phaseAssess current state of order managementCreate vision of new processWork divided into two teams team up A8 membersAnalyze current state of the processesUnderstand the costs time of doing businessRecommend short term improvementsTeam B10 internal managers consultantsCreate vision for future state of process.Both teams were jointly responsible for managing the organizational changerequired for the initiative to succeedImplications of New playTeam created a large financial model to analyze the costs, benefits, and financial risks of implementing the new PTP process.The new process was very expensive (around $150million)Cost for prototype process effortsCost of SAP ImplementationCost of fully implementing and operating the new workstations, networks, and SAP softwareCost for retaining, relocating, and removing employeesReturn on the PTP investment appeared very high.Prototypes and pilots was intend in the middle Atlantic states region.Changes in Information technologyMobile data network necessarySAP installationSales force workstation non only the design s adoption has to be justified in financial terms, but also the long process of changing had to be started.Implications for Employees credence of the new process.Management, evaluation and compensation of their day to day work.Communicated the nature of these changes through written communication.Mixed ReactionPerformers loved the new process because of more exemption and less bureaucracy.Less capable performers were disturbed about how they would fareDramatic change not only in how the field personnel did their work bt also how they were managed, evaluated and implementedReorganization at HeatwayChange in the managementSalada remain as chairmanKacher would leave HeatwayInformation systems function would be outsourced to an external firm with substantial SAP experience.Reorganization could have been problematic for PTPEuropean groups would have less incentive to adopt the PTP design.Want of new system provider to implement SAP without concern of PTP process visionConcernsFirestone concernDifficulty in assessing how rapidly the construction and rollout of PTP capabilities should take place.Other memebers of the operations committee were neither worried nor committed to PTP.Change in the commitment by the key managers after tHe reorganization.These are those managers whose functional areas would shrink with the adoption of PTP despite organism offered important role at Heatway.Financing for PTPIf all the resources are devoted then both revenue and profitability goals would not meet.DecisionsEveryone understood that PTP implementation is a good investment.Head of international said she wanted to wait to see how PTP worked in the U.S. before transferring resources from her budget.Friestone tried unsucessfully at one one meeting to make PTP corporate initiative.Its upto firestone and other executives to decide how quickly to roll out the new process and how to fund it