The 4th International Research Symposium on Problem-Based Learning (IRSPBL) 2013

Experiences of PBL for Reengineering in Small Business

Yoshio Tozawa* Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology, Tokyo, 140-0011, Japan

Abstract

We use real business cases in PBL education so that a student can accumulate the experience of business management. The goal of a PBL project is to make a recommendation which brings business values to a cooperation company. Reengineering, or changes of the current way of work, is identified. Understanding of the business of the company is a key to success. If the company is in small business, limited scope of the business helps us to control team activities of the project. But there are still big rooms to think about from variety of business viewpoints. We report for cases of our experiences in PBL education. These experiences clarify what are difficult for students to come up with the important ideas.

Keywords: PBL, reengineering, IT strategy, consulting service

1. Introduction

Our university is a small public professional graduate school founded by Tokyo metropolitan government. We have two master programs, one is Information Systems Architecture and the other is Innovation for Design and Engineering. Problem Based Learning has been introduced as a key curriculum for education. Students are expected to get competencies to work as highly skilled people in real business environment through PBL. Students take lectures in a first year. In a second year students form groups to do projects. One group makes of 3 to 7 members. A theme of project is given to the group by teachers. Group activities are sources for students to learn in the second year. PBL is positioned as a major educational method in our master programs (Tozawa, Kato, 2009).

The author belongs to the graduate course of Information Systems Architecture. The author used to be a business consultant specializing IT strategy. The author wants to teach students what are important in business as a business consultant (Tozawa, 2009, Tozawa 2011). We report our experiences of PBL education and activities for recent two years. We have done four real business cases, one case study in a semester. The project teams consist of 4 to 5 students. All the students have job experiences of several years. The objective of education is for students to learn what are needed to create business values utilizing IT (Information Technology). We hope our experiences could be references to conduct PBL education.

2. PBL using real business cases

The essential theme of our PBL is to create business values utilizing IT. New business values come always from the change of current way of works. IT technology or IT solution alone does not bring business values. Changes of business processes, change of business model, or changes of the current way of works are necessary to bring new business values. Changes can be usually done because of advancement of IT. What used to be considered impossible before can be possible now due to new IT. Business reengineering and IT strategy are two sides of the same coin. Reengineering is essential to advance business values (Hammer, 1993).

Business values depend on the business in which a company is working. In our PBL we need business cases. We ask cooperation companies to provide us the business cases. From viewpoint of a cooperation company our PBL activity looks like management consulting. We ask the company to cooperate with us about 5 months. We have about ten times of meetings during the period. We ask the management of the company to attend the meeting. The management hear our reports or proposal, reviews our activities, and makes any comment. The meeting time is about one hour and half in the evening of week days, since students have full-time jobs.

* Corresponding Author name. Tel.: +81-3-3472-7831 E-mail address: tozawa@aiit.ac.jp

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Cooperation

companies were as

follows in these two years.

Metal plating company (upper half of 2011) Home health care massage (latter half of 2011) Sales division of life insurance (upper half of 2012) Cosmetic dermatology clinic (latter half of 2012)

2.1. Educational objectives

IT industry has been shifting from manufacturing to services business. In Japan highly IT skilled people are short, resulting in fails of many projects. Figure 1 shows where highly IT skilled people participate. There are two main areas, one is service user side and the other is service provider (vender) side. Services are used for service users’ business of the enterprise. People in service user and service provider share the same goal to run the business of the enterprise. It seems that the objective of service vender is to meet the requests of service users. However, service users have their own objectives, that is, to meet business requirements to their business of the enterprise.

Though highly IT skilled people have IT knowledge and skills, they are also required to understand business of service users as well. They need to understand what managements of the enterprise think. They should know management priority, business objectives and strategy, and so on. Talk to management is important to capture their thought. Since most students do not have chances to talk to management in their work environment, we provide students with opportunities to talk to management in PBL education.

The success of service business is to meet and exceed the expectation of service users. Understanding of the expectation is very important. Skills required to understand the expectation are sometimes called soft skills, such as, communication skill, leadership skill, and negotiation skill. These soft skills are not taught in most engineering departments of Japanese universities. It is difficult to teach such skills by lectures. Since PBL project is group activities as a team, soft skills can be trained in the activities.

Our PBL activities look like consulting from the management view point of a cooperation company. The management spends time with us in the meeting. In return he/she expects some valuable idea or hints from us. The management usually has some issues in mind, though such issues are not well expressed. Clarification of such issues is one of expectations. It is challenge to discover the hidden expectations. Though these activities are natural to a business consultant, many students may never acquire experience.

When we propose an idea or a recommendation to the management, it is important to judge whether it is accepted or not. How it is accepted by the management can be read by responses, behaviors, or remarks. Accumulation of experience of management response is important when he/she is satisfied with the proposed idea. Our PBL education can provides chances for a student to acquire this kind of experience, which is hard to acquire otherwise.

Students do projects twice in a year using the same methodology. Mastering the methodology is one of the educational objectives. We expect students can apply the methodology when they face the similar situation in the future.

2.2. Methodology

Figure 2 shows our methodology of business reengineering used in the projects of PBL. The methodology is independent of industry. Industry knowledge is not prerequisite to reengineering. Logical thinking is much more important. The final goal of the

Step 2

ProjectInitiation

Identification ofBusiness Issues

&IT System Issues

(As Is)

Confirmation ofBusiness Strategy,

Business environment& Industry Trend

IdealBusinessScenario(To Be)

Step 0

Step 1

Step 3 Step 4

Change Principles&

Identification ofPoints to Change

FinalPresentation

Step 5

Figure 2. Methodology of business reengineering used in our PBL

Figure 1. Highly IT skilled people are required both in user side and in provide side. Both people share the same goal to run the business of the enterprise.

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project is to come up with the state where the management of the company makes decision to change the current ways of work. The project team makes a final presentation at the end of the project to persuade the management.

Step 0 is the initiation of the project. The cooperation company is determined. The team members understand each other well. Team characteristics are identified, such as, what are strong, what background we have. Members agree the objective of the project. At this point they don’t know the concrete objective, since no meeting with the cooperation company is held yet. All the available information related to the company is collected in preparation. Meanings of the company specific terms are investigated to avoid misunderstanding. This kind of preparation is important to understand adequately what the management of the company says at the first meeting.

Step 1 is to understand the business of the company. The main source is the meeting with the management of the company. In the first meeting the management explains their business, that is, what is doing, who is the customer, history of the company, what they want to do, what are issues, and so on. A couple of meetings are held to confirm that the team understands the company business appropriately. The business strategy is identified. The business environment and industry trend are investigated.

In consultation of business reengineering, we seldom make a proposal to business strategy. Business strategy is usually given. We create proposal for reengineering or IT strategy which is aligned with the business strategy. Alignment of business strategy and IT strategy is important. In this sense logical thinking is important while industry knowledge is not so important.

Step 2 is to identify issues. The management may make some comments on the issues which are in mind. Such comments are very important because they express how the management views the business. Some issues raised could be superficial. Our goal in the step 2 is to identify the root issues which cause the superficial issues.

Business processes are clarified and modeled. How business is done is analyzed. Since the way of business is a matter of course for the company, business processes are sometimes not well under conscious. Any business process has its objective. It is discussed whether the process meets the objective. Once the business processes are modeled, it is easy to communicate and to share what are wrong or what can be improved in the current way of work.

In order to approach the root cause from superficial issues we use the thinking process of hypothesis and verification. Most superficial issues usually have some measures to avoid troubles. Such temporary measures may hide the problem but do not solve the root problem. We need to identify the root cause of issues to solve. Analysis is useful to approach the root cause. Though analysis is good, we suggest building up the hypothesis of the root cause. Some students are not familiar with the thinking process of hypothesis and verification. They are trained how to approach the root cause.

If IT systems does not support the business processes appropriately, IT system issues are listed. When the systems were built at first, the system could not have capability to support the business processes. Since IT is advancing, IT can support the business processes now. IT system issues are identified from the viewpoint of current IT capability.

Step 3 is to sketch the picture of ideal (To-Be) state of the business. This is a goal to attain which is shared by the management and employees of a company. The picture reflects the thought of the management. The picture should clarify the strategy. Step 3 is not a solution of issues. Step 3 does not directly connect to step 2. Rather it connect to step 1.

Step 2 clarifies the current status quo with issues (As-Is). Step 3 clarifies the ideal goal to attain (To-Be). Step 4 defines what to change so that the company can reach to the goal from the status quo. Step 4 is essential for the management to make decision of change.

Change principles are defined at first. There are usually many things to change. However, points to change should be easily memorized and shared by the management and employees as a strategy. Number of points to change should be limited to several. Each point to change is an action to do for change. One chart is drawn for each point to change to clarify what to change. We use a template of the charts (Figure 7 is a sample). Left hand side of the chart shows As-Is while right hand side of the chart shows To-Be. The change is easily understandable from left (As-Is) to right (To-Be).

Step 5 is a final presentation. Consistent simple story is needed to persuade the management to make decision. A logical consistent story is made up as a strategy. All the elements of activities done in previous steps are summarized.

This presentation is a little bit different from that for general audience. In a presentation for general audience all the elements of logic must be clearly stated. However, in a final presentation to the management, some elements can be omitted, since the management knows his/her business well.

The message of the final presentation may not sound new. It looks trivial from general common sense. However, it is meaningful if it fit to the business of the company.

2.3. Project team operation

The project team consists of 4 to 5 students. One student is assigned as a project manager role. Meetings with the cooperation company are scheduled roughly once in two weeks. Just after each meeting, the students get together at near coffee shop to record what they hear at the meeting before they forget. The next internal student meeting starts with the review of the last cooperation company meeting using the record.

After the review of the last meeting, we decide what we bring at next cooperation company meeting. This determines the activities by next visit. Detail schedule of activities is planned about for two weeks. Rough plan of activities comes from the methodology. But detail plan is created every time after the cooperation company meeting for next visit. Interestingly this practice is very much like scrum software development process (Schwaber, 2010). Practice of management consulting is always

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adjusting activities to client intention. There are common principles both in agile software development (Takeuchi, 1986) and consulting practice.

Several team meetings are held before visiting the cooperation company. 6 to 8 hour team meeting is held on Saturday. 3 hour meeting is held once a week in weekday evening. Each student is assigned homework to the next meeting. It takes about 3 hours to complete the homework. The subject of homework is decided by the supervisor (the author) or the project manager.

Since the project is to conduct consultation, team discussion is encouraged to reach better ideas. Outcome of the homework becomes a start line of the discussion. Subject of the discussion is given by the supervisor. The supervisor reviews the contents after team discussion of a couple of hours. Quality of discussion contents is critical in consultation. If the supervisor does not satisfied with the contents, he gives students hints to think. The team discussion is repeated. Time of discussion is not so important from educational point of view, rather contents of discussion are important. The supervisor must be patient to wait.

If some ideas come from the discussion, the supervisor let students to present them to the management of the company. The management makes judgment whether they are acceptable of not. Students learn the required quality level to get accepted from the response. The supervisor lets students to learn for themselves. The supervisor controls the quality so that the management may not feel waste of time.

Students always prepare charts for the meeting with the management to communicate their messages adequately. Skills to draw charts are well trained as well. Though chart creation is divided to each student, message creation is cooperative activity.

2.4. Evaluation of students

Evaluation of students in PBL is always difficult. Students mainly learn by doing activities in the project. Activities assigned to a student vary depending on a situation of the project. A teacher cannot control well the assignment. What a student learns may be different from what a teacher wants the student to learn.

In this particular PBL we evaluate a student from two aspects, one is the extent of any contribution to the project and the other is the extent of ideas which bring value to the cooperation company. Some students are not good at putting forward an idea. Even if the extent of idea is short, the extent of contribution as a whole is evaluated. The supervisor is watching students’ activities so that he can evaluate appropriately. As two other sub-supervisors evaluate students as well so that the evaluation of the supervisor might not get out of common standard.

3. Actual cases

3.1. Metal plating company

3.1.1. Background

The cooperation company is in small business with special technology of particular metal plating. The number of employees is about 30. The president of the company is very aggressive. He thinks that recent IT has big potential power to contribute even to small business. He asked us that any opportunity of utilizing recent IT. He knew conventional application development which sometimes resulted in the rigid functionality. Once an application is built, it is difficult to adjust it to the changing environment. He thought that the recent IT could overcome such the rigidity.

The president has a firm faith that every people have a good potential capability. If such capability is well developed, the company becomes strong. IT can help develop the capability.

3.1.2. The first pitfall

Figure 3 shows the business of metal plating company. It was really hard work to complete Figure 3. The company is classified in the category of parts makers. In general a parts maker manufactures parts and provides a customer with parts. Parts can be stocked. However, the metal plating company does not manufacture parts, even in the case of new parts. New parts are manufactured by other company. The new parts are brought in to the company for metal plating. The plated parts are shipped to the customer. There is no stock of parts in the company. Though the company belongs to manufacturing industry, the essence of the business is service of plating.

Service business view is much more important than manufacturer view in understanding the business of the company. The change of thought was required. But it was very difficult because bias in favor of manufacturing was very strong. Figure 3 was an initial key chart of step1. It took a couple of days to complete it until students understand the business as service.

This example shows that it is very difficult for student to grasp the business appropriately. The management told us their business and how they operate thoroughly. But students could not understand them correctly. Preconception of manufacturing industry prevented students from the idea of service business.

It is very important to understand business. Without right understanding of business, it is difficult to find issues.

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Teacher as a supervisor let the students discuss the business of the company several hours at first. But their discussion didn’t approach the right direction. He raised several questions so that students could realize the right direction. Some components of Figure 3 came from the answers of the questions. After all components are put up to Figure 3.

3.1.3. Ideal state of business and Points to change

Figure 4 shows the ideal state of business (To-Be) in step 3 and three points to change in step 4. We have discussed a lot with the president. He thinks that the basic of company strength comes from employee. If each employee exhibits his potential well, the company becomes stronger. Every employee has thinking capability. If good input for think is supplied, employees can think for themselves to improve something.

Information should be provided as company asset. Good and faster communication among employees in different divisions is important. Motivation of employees must be kept high. Though each of these sound trivial, it is important for the president to realize and confirm these.

The president accepted and appreciated Figure 4 when presented. The president took some actions after our final presentation to the cooperation company. This was the sign that our activity brought value to the company.

A value to the company varies from company to company. There are many things said what should be done in general. But identification and prioritization to do is important. This comes from understanding of business and discussion with management. Indeed Figure 4 seems trivial for some, but it has value for the particular company.

This kind of experience is important to learn. We believe that we succeeded PBL education in this sense in this case.

3.2. Home health care massage company

Figure 3 Business of metal plating company

Figure 4 Three points to change with To-Be stage of the company

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3.2.1. Background

The company was introduced by the president of metal plating company. In Japan home health care massage became a subject of health insurance about 15 years ago. The president established the company and entered the new service market of home health care massage since then. The company has grown rapidly. There are about 60 stations nationwide now. The number of staffs is about 500.

The president has several concerns about the growth of the company. For example, he has confidence to grow from 1 to 10. But he does not have good confidence to grow from 10 to 100. Once the company becomes bigger, the operation must be changed from that of small size.

The president told us his vision, business strategy, what he has done, and his concerns. Our team tried to respond the concerns that were expressed at the meeting. We investigated several books, web, and materials. We reported what we investigated with our comments. These activities were well accepted. As activities were many, we divided the work into two smaller groups (two to three students).

3.2.2. Structure of concerns

We used strategic capability network as a tool to figure out capabilities which support business strategy. This activity led the CSFs (critical success factors). CSFs were part of our recommendations. Figure 5 illustrates the relationship among vision, business strategy, business model, and CSFs. CSFs are written in white circles in lower half. There are many similar concepts, such as, vision, business strategy, business model, and company ideology. The president talked us about these. Each of them is important. But it was a little bit difficult for us to understand as a whole. This impression triggered to draw Figure 5 for arrangement of thought. The president has thought about these a lot. In a discussion at the meeting, the president got stimulated from us. He got new insight from our report and discussion. The discussion eventually brought values to the president. Figure 5 is one of the summaries of our activities. Students acquired very good experience. They learned what the management responds when satisfied.

3.3. Sales division of life insurance

3.3.1. Background

The goal is obvious to increase sales of life insurance by life consultants. Their basic business model was established more than 100 years ago. A life consultant asks a new client to introduce prospects. A list of prospect is an essential asset for the life consultant.

A manager of sales division of a life insurance company thought that there could be another business model, since IT has been advanced and IT has impacted society so much. He provided us the case.

3.3.2. Difficulty of logic creation

Figure 5 Structure of president concerns and our recommendations

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We have more than dozen of meetings with the manager. Each meeting was about 2 hours. Student team often failed to deliver good values to the manager. Since he was not satisfied the contents of presentation, he gave us many suggestions. Teacher did not give students clear advice to overcome the situation. Teacher thought that students should realize the cause of difficulty. Eventually the planed final presentation has been postponed, because quality of contents was not good.

Students had already enough elements of contents for presentation. They lack the key logic for persuasion. Figure 6 is the chart which is added after postpone of final presentation. Students had implicitly noticed that same interest or same concern were key. But they have never explicitly expressed it. There is common recognition that attractiveness of life consultant results in the success of sales. Adding Figure 6 with the story for success of sales, students completed the final presentation. Most of charts were the same at the time of postpone. Contents were not changed. Logic was explicitly added and clarified.

At the final presentation the director of sales division gave us very good comments. After all final presentation was successful. Students have experienced that a little difference turned out the success.

3.4. Cosmetic dermatology clinic

3.4.1. Background

The company was introduced by the president of home health care massage company. The employees of clinic are 7 other than the doctor and the president (wife of the doctor). When the clinic opened in 2000, cosmetic dermatology clinic was very new in Japan. There were so many customers that they had to wait 3 to 4 month to get treated. Since then business environment has changed. Many competitors appear. Behavior of customers changes. The president asked us any improvement of their business.

The president expressed issues from her perspective. The clinic does not provide functions to make a reservation through web home page. How can the clinic achieve the best balance between resource capacity and customer needs? In summer some customers have to wait 2 to 3 months, while in winter resources sometimes become idle. These are very natural observations. We tried to approach the root cause of issues.

We analyzed their business and their business processes. During the meeting with the company the president has noticed the problems which can be easily solved. Some actions were quickly taken which were triggered by our activities. Students were glad to get direct response.

3.4.2. Change the way of booking

One of root issues we identified is booking (make a reservation). It is natural that booking time is the time a customer requests. But it does not fit to the case of this clinic. We simulated how the requests conflict if we accept customer request time. The result was about 50%. This number matches the feeling of receptionist. Since this number is big, there could be potential customers who give up to get treated by this clinic. The smaller conflict occurs, the better. This issue was not well recognized until we pointed out.

Analyzing reservation records, we found that 3 slot reservation holds more than two third. In order to reduce conflicts, reservation should be arranged so that 3 contiguous slots may be left. This led the change of thought that the booking time is not the customer request time but the recommended time by the clinic. The recommendation can be controlled easily by guide boarders.

Figure 6 New business model to get prospects for life consultants

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Figure 7 shows this change as one of points to change. As objective of the project is to change the way of work, new way of booking fit to this. If IT support is available, there are additional services become available. Figure 7 shows these potential services, one of which is web reservation.

3.4.3. Crucial influences of PBL activities

The president of the clinic said; “I had never thought that the clinic (operations of the clinic) could change. Now I find even the clinic can change.” One of the students said; “I am able to feel happiness when I see that the client becomes happy through our consultation and when the client says

‘thank you.’”

4. Discussion

All the students of these PBL projects have work experience. Even though students have work experiences, it is still hard for them to grasp the business exactly. All the aspect of business is not explained or described. Some business processes must be compensated by hypothesis. The hypothesis must be checked whether it is right or not. Students are not well accustomed to this type of thinking process.

Appropriate understanding of business is essential to bring business values to a company. If a company is in small business, scope of business is limited. I think it is easier for a student to understand the business. But there is variety of viewpoints to approach the business values even in small business.

Real business case projects provide a student with particular experience which could be hard to acquire in current daily jobs. A little difference turns out the success or the failure of projects. Though it is said that there are many things to learn in failure, I believe that success experience is also very important.

Conversation with the management gives students with insights. Direct response of the management to a proposal or a comment guides students for direction. Discussion with the management brings the different ways of thinking. I believe that it is important to provide opportunities where students meet directly with the management.

References

Tozawa, Y., Kato, Y. and Chubachi, Y. (2009), Efforts to ensure the quality of PBL education in the graduate school of Information Systems, Proceedings of the 2nd International Research Symposium on PBL 2009, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia.

Tozawa, Y., (2009), IT strategy education through project based learning, Research on PBL Practice in Engineering Education, Sense Publishers, (Chapter 14) Tozawa, Y. (2011), Case studies of education in business process reengineering through PBL, Proceedings of the 3nd International Research Symposium on PBL

2011, Coventry University, UK. Hammer, M., and Champy, J. A.(1993), Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, Harper Business Books, New York Schwaber, K. , & Sutherland, J. (2010). The Scrum Guide, Scrum.org. Takeuchi, H., & Nonaka, I. (1986). The New New Product Development Game. Harvard Business Review.

Figure 7 Booking time is not the customer request time but recommended time by the clinic.

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