Problem: A catalog order-filling process for personalized printed products can be described as follows:
Telephone orders are taken over a 12-hour period each day. Orders are collected from each person at the end of the day and checked for errors by the supervisor of the phone department, usually the following morning. Depending on how busy she was on the phone, this one-day batch of orders would not get to the data processing department until after 1:00 PM.
The next step is data processing. Orders are invoiced in the one-day batches. Then they are printed and matched back to the original orders. At this point, if the order was for a new customer, it was sent to the person who did the customer verification and setup of new customer accounts. This had to be done before the order could be invoiced.
The next step involved order verification and proofreading. Once invoicing was completed, the orders with invoices attached were given to a person who verified that all required information was present and correct to permit typesetting. If there was a question, it was checked by computer or by calling the customer. Finally, the completed orders were sent to the typesetting department of the print shop.
Question 1: Develop a flowchart of this process.
Question 2: Discuss opportunities for improving the quality of service in this situation.