Ritika Tapuriah (A0122974B) Operations Management - Final Reflection

BMA5010A - Managing Operations

Personal Final Reflection
78 March 2015

Submitted by:
Ritika Tapuriah (A0122974B)
ritika.tapuriah@u.nus.edu
NUS MBA Full Time Intake 2014
To

Ritika Tapuriah (A0122974B) Operations Management - Final Reflection

Jamie Dimon
CEO, JP Morgan Chase
I was associated with JP Morgan Chase for 3 years as a technical analyst and
a business analyst in the Retail Financial Services vertical. I have had the
opportunity to pursue my MBA at National University of Singapore. However I
am taking this opportunity to highlight few aspects that I think could improve
your current business processes that I have learnt post my course on
Operation Management.
In the sectors I have worked, I have had the opportunity to understand the
reliance of banks operations on its technology. JP Morgan invests a
magnificent amount of money in maintaining its technical systems and her
25,000+ strong technical workforce across the world and I was personally
expecting the bank to be a pioneer in innovations in the banking domain.
During my course I have learned new initiatives that could be applied to
improve the efficiency of the system. Of the many experiments and readings
that were conducted during our course, three of them made me think about
ways to improve the already present processes in your firm.
In the first experiment, we were divided into teams and asked to make paper
puppets based on a specific client requirements. The client requirements
were communicated by the team leader to the team based on his
understanding. The team was divided into 4 sub teams, responsible for
cutting, folding, coloring and inspecting the end products. The inspection for
quality was the last role played in the manufacturing process and opinion of
the product to be failed or pass seemed to be very late which lead us to take
more time in setting it right. As the cost of identifying a defect at the end of
the process is huge and the time taken to rectify that defect is also very long
we needed to have intermediary quality control inspection of the product
throughout the important process. This would ensure that defects are
identified in a timely manner and rectified on the go.

Ritika Tapuriah (A0122974B) Operations Management - Final Reflection

If we apply the same principle here in your firm when developing technology
and applications for the bank, we should be adopting an agile methodology
rather than a waterfall process. Every person working on the project whether
a business analyst, technical analyst, product manager, or a quality assurer
have to work together in every step to ensure that any deviation from the
client requirements are identified immediately and rectified before moving
ahead and letting the shortcoming snowball into a bigger and costlier defect.
Gradually increase quality rather than ignoring current bugs or instituting
quick fixes and saying "Wait until next release".
Another experiment that was conducted helped us understand how the
outcomes vary when we change the environment of the experiment. As we
had seen a couple of years back, when Hurricane Sandy had hit US and the
operations of the US offices in New York and New Jersey and all along the
east coast were affected, the operations in offices in other parts of the world
were also impacted due to their dependence on the headquarters in New
York. This event had shown us how we had to improve our resiliency planning
to ensure no disruption in the operations. We have come a long way from our
experience during Sandy and we should continuously improve to ensure
continuity.
The final experiment on the beer game helped me understand the
dependence of each stakeholder on one another. In a technical solutions
team, we were interdependent on the business stakeholders to understand
the customer requirements and communicate those requirements as
enhancements or work orders to us. If the business analysts missed on this
transition

of

information,

the

end

results

were

different

from

the

requirements hence not meeting the customer needs. This would not only
mean loss in revenue and business but also loss of customers trust.
Especially with a bank, the trust of the customer has to be maintained and
the systems enhanced to ensure that customer experience increases without
any added risks.

Ritika Tapuriah (A0122974B) Operations Management - Final Reflection

Hope these learnings would help JP Morgan Chase in their journey ahead.
Thank you.

Yours Sincerely,
Ritika Tapuriah
To
Bill Veghte
COO, Hewlett Packard
I have been following Hewlett Packard (HP), ranked #17 on the Forbes 500
Service Company, and read that HP has had a long association with quality
management tools such as Kaizen, introducing a simple seven point checklist to ensure that each function of the organization was focused on its
customers, HP has made a cognizant effort to satisfy the needs of its
customers. The HP Kaizen comprised of seven questions which helped
answer the questions what is the purpose of our existence and what can
we do to excel at our purpose?
By asking these questions each business unit and department was able to
understand that their primary purpose was to produce for the benefit of
other departments and units. They could then apply practices to solve any
problems and improve quality of their processes. Many business units can
now see that as long they are producing, the other departments are
surviving and so are they.
Having studied about W. Edwards Deming and his 14 principles in the
Operations Management class during my MBA course in National University
of Singapore, I came across a few points that would help HP improve their
processes and quality.

Ritika Tapuriah (A0122974B) Operations Management - Final Reflection

1. HP should look to create constancy of purpose toward continual

improvement of products and service, distributing resources for long
term needs, rather than looking at short term lucrativeness, with the
aim to become competitive and stay in business. Like in the case of
Yamato Transport, Co., Ltd., the main aim of the management was to
look at continual business improvement and long term goals were their
primary concern.
2. Advancement never stops. The customer demands vary fast, and the
competition in the market grows rapidly. HP should look at eliminating
delays,

mistakes,

defective

materials/products.

HP

should

fully

understand that defective products and services are a huge cost to the
system. Din Tai Fung a Taiwan based restaurant, was looking at
complains from their countries of operation to understand where they
were going wrong and changing the set-up as needed to suit the
environment of their operation.
3. HP should look at getting rid of the need for inspection by building
quality into the product. End inspection of the products/services is
equivalent to planning for defects, recognizing that the process isnt
correct, or that the client requirements were understood incorrectly in
the first place. Inspection is too late, unproductive and expensive. HP
should look at improving the process to eliminate the possibility of
producing defects in the first place, thus eliminating the need for
inspection on a mass basis.
4. HP should look to end the practice of granting business on the base of
price-tag alone. Instead, it has to focus on reducing the total cost. As in
the case of Toyota, each of the supplier has been associated with
Toyota over many years building trust and loyalty thereby giving the
best service to Toyota. Toyota also does not select its suppliers based
on lowest price bidder but based on the quality maintained by the
supplier of its supplies thereby reducing the overall cost.
5. HP has to look at building trust within its employees by stubbing out
fear so that all its employees can work efficiently and effectively for

Ritika Tapuriah (A0122974B) Operations Management - Final Reflection

the organization. Collaboration and cooperation requires the workforce

to be encouraged and to be made felt an integral part of the
organization. People are averse to changes and any effort to improve
the existing processes would be met with resistance and fear.
6. HP should look to eradicate work standards that establish quotas for
the workforce and numerical goals for the management. The
accountability of management must be altered from only numbers to
quality.
Hope these points would help HP in their journey ahead.
Thank you.

Yours Sincerely,
Ritika Tapuriah