Presentation

Business Process Management (BPM) is the set of concepts, methods, and tools that help organizations define, implement, measure and improve their end-to-end processes. Functional and Process Management (FPM) is a combination of mature organizational transformation concepts (Business Process Reengineering, Lean Six Sigma, Total Quality Management) and supporting technologies such as workflow management, process analytics, and service-oriented systems. Global analysts such as the Gartner Group have identified the improvement of business processes as the number one priority of CEOs for a number of years.

Processes and process management are becoming an essential part of contemporary organizations in all industries. Quality management, Six Sigma and Lean all build on components of working with and improving organizational processes. However, many organizations experience problems during the implementation of a process management approach, including the effect of organizational structures, roles and responsibilities.

The purpose of this course is to explore and describe the organizational implications when implementing process management, how to handle the relationship between the functional organization and a process perspective, and the roles of managers, teams, and individuals. The course addresses the methods and techniques required to analyze, design, implement, and evaluate business processes.

Structured along the phases of the Business Process Management life cycle, students learn to analyze organizational performance from a process perspective, redesign processes using value-focused techniques, and implement them in Functional and Process Management (FPM) systems, simulate new process designs, and create process analytics applications. The course is designed to provide the body of management and technical knowledge necessary to implement quality management inside an organization from a management point-of-view. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization from a process perspective, conduct process improvement projects, and support corporate processes.

The course addresses the needs of public and private organizations with FPM initiatives. It covers topics relevant for students that plan to become business analysts that participate in FPM projects, but covers concepts that are useful for functional/line of business positions as well.

The course is also suitable for students interested in joining organizations with FPM tool offerings and provides business-level education for future sales-force personnel, technical staff, and consultants. The course makes use of real-world case studies to illustrate specific aspects of process mapping, analysis, improvement and evaluation, and to test student comprehension of the material.

Competences

General Competences

• GC1. To control and to integrate the techniques, instruments and methods of management needed in the development of the professional activity.
• GC2. To delve into the business management and into the different administration areas.
• GC4. That the students can communicate their conclusions, present their projects, results, plans, the knowledge and the reasons that support them before a specialized or an ordinary public in a clear and in an ambiguity free manner.
• GC5. That the students are able to integrate their knowledge in the different working areas of the business with information, usually incomplete or limited, in the business environment in order to manage the decision making and troubleshooting processes through complex and multidisciplinary situations.

Specífic Competences

• SC6. To understand the differentiating elements in the business administration, which performance field is continuously changing as consequence of the technological changes. This technological changes alter their market, their products and production or distribution processes, even they can affect some of their functional areas, shorten their products life cycles, generate the necessity to administrate self-generated funds for innovation and to fulfil continuously a technological forecast or to create technological observatories.
• SC7. To know and to use innovation management techniques. To create temporal competitive advantages by innovation.
• SC9. To understand the differences between a functional management and a processes management. Process Management.
• SC10. To know how to define a business process.
• SC11. Learning the existence, the applications and the boundaries of the Information Systems in the processes’ support and control.
• SC12. To understand the functional organization of the business. Areas interrelation. To identify and to understand the factors and dimensions that belongs to the functional part of the business, and the features of its administration system.
• SC13. To understand the impact that telecommunications have on business administration and in the business competitiveness.
• SC14. Learning the existence, the applications and the boundaries of the Information Systems and the impact of they have in decision-making, competitiveness and response promptness.
• SC25. To know how to use the e-commerce tools in the international market and to understand the relationship and the impact of the goods and services international distribution.
  

Transversal Competences

• TC2. Ability to make decisions in a technological changing environment.
• TC3. Being able to use TIC’s Technologies in management and decision-making.
• TC8. To ease the process of transition to the business professional career.
• TC9. To provide the students with learning skills that will allow them to continue their studies in an autonomous manner.

Program

Unit 1. Organization management and change
Introduction
Fourteen points for management
Organizations, behaviour, structures and process
Master class

Unit 2. Business Process Management
Introduction
Business Process Management Defined
Six Sigma Defined
Six Sigma Tools
Drawbacks of Six Sigma
Benefits of Six Sigma
Master class

Unit 3.Organizational Process Management and Measures
Introduction
Relationships among business systems and processes
Strategic planning and deployment for initiatives
Impact on stakeholders
Team Management
Master class

Unit 4.Six Sigma Improvement Methodology and Tools—Define
Introduction
Six Sigma Improvement Methodology and Tools –Define
Kolo Tea Shop Case Study
Voice of the customer
Team Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Tools
Business case and project charter
Project management (PM) tools
Master class

Unit 5. Six Sigma Improvement Methodology and Tools—Measure and Analyze
Introduction
Six Sigma Improvement Methodology and Tools—Measure
Process characteristics
Measurement systems
Six Sigma Improvement Methodology and Tools— Analyze
Kolo Tea Shop, Case Study
Master class

Unit 6.Six Sigma Improvement Methodology and Tools—Improve and Control
Introduction
Six Sigma Improvement Methodology and Tools—Improve
Lean Methods
Six Sigma Improvement Methodology and Tools—Control
Master class

Methodology

The different tasks and activities programmed during the semester have been developed with the goal of adapting the learning process to the different capabilities, necessities and interests of the students.

The activities included in the subject are:

• Practical cases: will provide the student with actual business situations that will need to analyse and, after that, make decisions, evaluate the consequences and alternatives. They will allow acquiring intellectual skills to face sudden situations or to plan action programs adapted to a changing environment where there is no math logic.
• Participation in events. During the course you will be participating in different events. Some of those events are attendance to online classes, forums, self-evaluation tests.

In the weekly program you can find the specific tasks you need to complete in this subject.

These activities are combined with the following aspects:

• Personal Study
• Tutoring. The tutoring class can be implemented through different tools and means. During the course of the subject, the teacher-tutor plans the individual tutoring on specific days for the resolution of academic-oriented doubts through “Consultation sessions”. Supplementing these sessions, students have also available the “Ask your teacher” forum through which they can formulate questions and check the corresponding answers on general aspects of the subject.  Due to the very nature of the media used, there are no fixed schedules for the students.
• Mandatory on-site final exam

The hours dedicated to each activity are detailed as follows:

Bibliography

Basic bibliography

The book used in all the units of the course, except in Unit 2, is:

Breyfogle III, F. W. (2003). Implementing six sigma: smarter solutions using statistical methods.Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Available at the virtual campus under the art. 32.4 of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law*.

Furthermore, in Unit 1, you must read:

• Gibson, J. L., Ivancevich, J. M., Donnelly, J. H., & Konopaske, R. (2012). Organizations: Behavior, structure, processes (pp. 397-405). New York, NY. McGraw-Hill.
  Available at the virtual campus under the art. 32.4 of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law*.

And, in Unit 2, you must read:

• Conger, S. (2015). Six sigma and business process management. In J. vom Broke & M. Rosemann, Handbook on Business Process Management 1, (pp. 127-148). Berlin Heidelberg: Springer.
  Available at the virtual campus under the art. 32.4 of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law*.

• Tetteh, G. A. (2015). Improving learning outcome using Six Sigma methodology. Journal of International Education in Business, 8(1), 18-36.
  Available at the virtual campus under the art. 32.4 of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law*.
  

* This work is protected by copyright and its reproduction and public communication, in the available modality, is authorized under the art. 32.4 of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law. It is forbidden its subsequent reproduction, distribution and public communication in any form or by any means, except one printed reproduction by each authorized user.

Additional Bibliography

Anthony, W.P., Perrewe, P.L. & Kacmar, K.M. (1999). Human Resource Management: A Strategic Approach. New York: Dryden Press.

Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) (1991). Fundamental Statistical Process Control. AIAG, Southfield (MI).

Cramer, H. (1946). Mathematical Methods of Statistics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Deming, W. E. (1986). Out of the crisis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for advanced engineering study. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.

Deming, W.E. (1982). Quality, productivity, and competitive position. Cambridge: MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study.

Eureka, W. E. & Ryan, N. E., (1988). The Customer Driven Company: Managerial Perspectives on QFD. Dearborn, MI: ASI Press.

Goetsch, D.L & Davis, S.B., (2006). Quality Management for Organizational Excellence: Introduction to Total Quality Management (p. 509), 6th ed.. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Hutchins, M. D. (2012). Hoshin Kanri: the strategic approach to continuous improvement. Gower Publishing, Ltd.

Kerzner, H.R. (2009). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Hoboken.

Kubiak, T. M., & Benbow, D. W. (2009). The certified six sigma black belt handbook. Milwaukee: ASQ Quality Press.

Montgomery, D. C. (2005). Introduction to Statistical Quality Control. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Shewhart, W.A. (1986). Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control. New York: Dover Publications Inc.

Tetteh, G. A. (2015). Improving learning outcome using Six Sigma methodology. Journal of International Education in Business, 8(1), 18-36.

Xu, Q., Jiao, R.J., Yang, X., and Helander, M. (2009). An analytical Kano model for customer need analysis. Design Studies, 30(1), 87-110.

Evaluation and Assessment

The evaluation system is based on the following numerical chart:

The grade is made up of two components:

On-site final exam (60%). At the end of the semester, you need to assist a mandatory on-site final exam. You need to pass the final exam so the grade obtained from the assignments (continuous assessment) is summed up to the final grade of the subject. 

Continuous assessment (40%): this type of assessment will be measured through the different assignments you need to complete during the course:

• Active participation and involvement in forums, online classes.
• Tasks. The completion of the different activities the students need to send through our virtual classroom such as research, critical thinking, practice cases.
• Self-evaluation tests. At the end of each unit, students will find a short quiz which will help the students to check the knowledge acquired during the course.

Remember that you can check the points (value) of each assignment in the weekly program.

Professor

Zbigniew J. Tracyzk

Education: He holds a master’s degree in Electronics Engineering, MBA from Henley Business School (U.K.) and a master certificate in Project Management from the George Washington University. He graduated from the PMI Leadership Institute Masters Class in 2008.
Mr. Traczyk is an IBM-certified senior professional and a PMI volunteer leader for the past 12 years. From 2007 to 2010, he served as a PMI mentor in the EMEA region. Between 2005 and 2006, he was a member of PMI Ethics Standard Development Team, contributing to the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

Professional experience: Zbigniew J. Traczyk has over 25 years of experience in operations, project, program and portfolio management. He is current leading Global Technology Services delivery operations at IBM in 15 countries with team over 1000 professionals. Mr. Traczyk is a recognized operations management instructor at Warsaw Business School for past 10 years. Mr. Traczyk is also an active PMI member and a Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification holder. He served from 2012 to 2014 on the PMI Board of Directors on the Governance Committee as the PMI secretary/treasurer and chair of the Performance Oversight Committee.

Lines of research: operations management, project management.

Tips

Studying online means you can organize your study as you wish, as long as you meet the due dates of the different assignments (activities, tasks and tests). In order to help you, we propose the following steps:

1. From our online platform you will have access to each of the subjects you are enrolled. Apart from this, t you can access to the virtual classroom of the master. In this section, you have available all the documents on how to use the different tools included in the virtual classroom, how a subject is organized and you will also have the possibility to organize your study plan with the tutor.
2. Do not forget to check the weekly program. You will see which part of the content of the course you have to work on every week.
3. After knowing your work for the week, go to Units in your virtual classroom. There, you will have access to the study material (theory and practice) from the unit you need to study throughout the week.
4. Start by reading thethe Basic Knowledge of the unit, this section is the basic study material of the unit. Always read the first part of the same, Introduction, as we will show you here all the material you need to study. Visit, as well, the Resources section, you will find here the complementary readings, videos, experiences, etc.
5. Devote some time when doing the Practical Cases and Test. In the subject Program we will detail which are the corresponding activities for each week and the max. grade you can achieve in each one.
6. We strongly recommend to take part in the events of the course (On-site virtual classes, debate forums, etc.). To know the exact date for each one of these events you must visit the communication media on the Virtual Classroom. Your teacher and your tutor will inform of the subjects news.

Remember that in the virtual classroom of the master you can check how the different tools of the virtual classroom work: email, forum, online classes, sending the tasks, etc.