Exercise 6

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Exercise 6.11 Consider the booking-to-cash process at a photography company (Fotof) described in Exercise 4.31. Which types of waste can you identify in this process?

I am looking for all move waste, hold waste and overdue waste in the given question.

Exercise 4.31

Fotof provides photography services in the fields of family photography, personal event photography (e.g. weddings and party photography) and commercial photography (e.g., corporate events). One of the core processes of Fotof is its booking-to-cash process, which goes all the way from the moment a customer makes a booking for a photo shooting session, through the order placement, to the moment the customer pays and obtains the ordered pictures. In the last year, Fotof received 10K orders from commercial customers, and 80K orders from private customers.

The booking-to-cash process starts when a customer makes a booking for a shooting session at a photo studio. A booking can be done via phone or via email addressed directly to a specific photo studio. The request is handled by a customer service representative at the photo studio. Each studio employs two customer service representatives: a senior one, who is also manager of the studio, and a junior one. The customer service representative enters the details of the booking into the photo studio information system.

The booking is assigned to one of the photographers of the studio. After a photo shooting session, the photographer uploads the pictures to a file server. Eventually, a technician cleans up the pictures by deleting duplicates and failed shots. Later the technician edits the remaining shots and arranges them into a photo gallery using a dedicated photo studio software tool. Once the gallery is completed, the customer is notified by email. The notification includes a URL of the gallery. Customers can view the gallery, select the pictures they wish to order in print (and how many copies) and those they wish to get in digital copy (full resolution). Customers can also annotate a selected picture in order to ask for additional editing (special requests). When placing their order, customers can specify whether they will pickup the printed copies at the studio or have them delivered by post. In the latter case, a shipment fee is added to the order. Once the customer has submitted the order, a technician performs additional editing (if required by the customer). In the case of special requests, the technician may need to  communicate with the customer by email or phone to clarify the request and to determine how to fulfill it, and whether the special request will entail an additional fee and how much. If printouts are required, the technician prints them out, puts them in an envelope, and drops them at the studio’s counter.

Pictures from a shooting session are kept in the corresponding gallery for up to 30 days (a reminder is sent to the customer 5 days before the expiry date). If a customer has not placed an order past this period, an invoice is sent for the minimum billing amount (see below). Invoices are payable within 7 days of their issue. A customer service representative sends a reminder when an invoice is overdue.

Once the pictures are ready, a customer service representative determines the amount to be invoiced (including additional fees for special requests). The customer service representative then produces an invoice and sends it to the customer. Once the invoice has been paid, the customer service representative packs and sends the printouts for postal156 4 Advanced Process Modeling delivery (if the customer ordered printouts) and sends a URL to the customer where the customer can find the full-resolution digital pictures they ordered. The matching of incoming payments to invoices is done automatically by an accountancy system (the same system that is used to issue invoices).

Booking or order cancelations can occur in three ways: (i) prior to the shooting session (booking cancelation); (ii) in case of no-show (the customer did not show up to the shooting session and did not reschedule it); or (iii) after the shooting, if the customer does not order any pictures within 30 days. Cancelations prior to the photo shooting session do not incur a fee. Cancelations due to no-shows do not attract a fee if they are in-studio; they attract a fee of e 50 if they are “on location”. In case of a no-show, the customer may reschedule the booking to a later day but the no-show fee for on-location shootings is charged to the customer in any case. If a customer does not order any picture after a shooting session, the customer is invoiced a photo shooting fee of e 100 for in-studio sessions (e 150 for on-location ones).