ahmedabad regional passport office

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Ahmedabad RegionalPassport Office

Rapid Response Time by ProcessRedesign

Service Operations Management Case Analysis Report

Group 8

Aashish Jethani - 2010004Debashish Bagg - 2010298

Namita Choudhary - 2010127Prabhuvardhan Reddy - 2010159

Sreechand Nambiar -2010230Susnata Chakraborty -2010236Tanuraj Kulshreshtha -2010240

Mudit - 2010123

Abstract:

This case discusses the attempt to redesign the process of issuing passports at theAhmedabad RPO which is suffering from a huge backlog. It gives a detailed description of the

passport application and approval process and its sub-processes; the layout of the passport office;number of employees in each section, etc. It also gives the initiatives taken by Mr Swain, theRegional Passport Officer to change some of the procedures in order to improve the responsetime of the RPO. This report is an attempt by the group to help the re-design the RPO tominimize existing backlogs and reduce possibilities of any such backlogs piling up in nearfuture.


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Service Operations Management Case Submission Ahmedabad Regional Passport Office

ContentsIntroduction to problem at Ahmedabad Regional Passport Office:.................................................2

Bottleneck process:..........................................................................................................................2Workforce Management:.................................................................................................................4

Benchmarking:.................................................................................................................................5

Process Redesign on basis of routing of application:......................................................................5

Redesign of PPF Police verification process:..................................................................................6

Redesign of application process:.....................................................................................................7

Reference:........................................................................................................................................7

Reference:

Introduction to problem at Ahmedabad Regional Passport Office:

Service time promised by Ahmedabad Regional Passport Office for fresh passportapplication is five weeks. Table 1 of the case details random sample of passport processing andtime taken by it at different stages. Mean delivery time according to that data is 145 days, i.e.21weeks or 29 working weeks (5 working days a week). It has also been mentioned that anapproximate of 1,00,000 applications have been pending might take 5000 3500 man weeks tocomplete which is a huge in terms of employment of casual workers for clearing. In monetaryterms the employment of casual workers for above clearing will cost 120 (wages per worker perday) *5000 (weeks of operation) *5 (operating days a week), i.e. Rs 30,00,000. This still dontguarantee that backlogs will not pileup while they are being cleared.

Figure 1: Piling backlog at Ahmedabad RPO

From the statics that have been mentioned in Table 2(b), (displayed in Figure 1 above)backlogs at Ahmedabad Regional Passport Office have been rising at an alarming rate that addsto causes why service process at Ahmedabad RPO needs a redesign.

Bottleneck process:

It is given that approximately 188,906 applications have been processed in 2000 byAhmedabad RPO. Assuming 230 working days, if would be 831 applications needs to beprocessed per day. Given that RPO works for 8 hours a day excluding half an hour for lunch(9:45am 6:15pm =8.5 hours 30 minutes (lunch) = 8 hours), we get 1.67 minutes of throughput time per application. Lets measure throughput that is being provided at Ahmedabad RPO.

Table 1 is a study of different process and the time taken for processing in that stage as pethe case. Going by this, if we neglect Preparation of Application as that is filled by the applicantand PVSR process that is done by the police we find that Writing is a process that might beforming the bottle neck. Through put of Ahmedabad RPO is 4 minutes, that will give 120application processed per day (8 hours * 60 minutes / 4 minutes). This leaves a gap of 711

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application per day which will give rise to 1,63,530 application backlog per year. If processingtime of other application is also considered, that may reduce the number of backlogs to 1,00,000.

Table 1: Time taken by different process

Sl No. Process Timing Adj. Time Extra than prev.

1 Preparation of Application By Individual hence can be skipped2 Process at RPO

Scrutinizing 3 + 5 min 8 min

Exit Dispatch of PPF 3 min 8 min zero min

Do not effect o/p Detailed Entry 2 min

Indexing 4 min

Re-entry Daily section 3 + 2 min

Linking at branches

Granting 2 min 2 min

Writing 6 min 6 min 4 min

Pasting and Laminating 5 min 5 min

3 PVSR Process By external body hence can be skipped

Table 2 is formed out of the data that is given table 5 and 7 of the case to assess thenumber of application that is being processed by each stage of this RPO. Figures in red are theextra man force that is not mentioned to any of the core department of the process and are

redistributed among the process at hand.From this table it can be seen that there is a clear mismatch of demand and supply ofservice at Ahmedabad RPO. When the overall demand of Application to be processed is 891applications per day only four processes makes it up to that number. It also happens that each ofthe process is not matched in terms of demand and supply to its previous and next processcausing multiple bottleneck process. Even in this case writing process remains the corebottleneck.

Table 2: Applications that can be processed by each stage at Ahmedabad RPO

Sl No ActivityApplications/Employee/ Day Employees Total applications

1Detailed Scrutiny -AcceptanceStage 160

2 Scrutiny and cash receipt 96 14 13443 detailed Scrutiny -Travel Agent 160

4 Detailed Scrutiny - Postal Agent 100

Scrutiny and cash receipt (max) 160 14 2240

5 Dispatch of PPF 160 3 480

6 Scanning of Registration Form 300 2 600

7 Detailed Entry 275 2 550

8 PVSR into computer 600 2 1200

9 Indexing 125 11 1375

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10 Linking 240 3 720

11 Granting 300 2 600

12 Signing 300 2 600

13 Writing 80 2 160

14 Pasting and lamination 240 3 720

15 Dispatch entry 480 2 960

Workforce Management:

Table3 is an extension of data in table 2 to find out the amount of employment gap thatexist in the present employees and demand i.e. 188,906 applications of 2000 or expected demandof 235,000 for the year 2001. This gives the data gives us an estimate of 56 to 69 employees areneeded to meet the present up surge in demand so that further backlogs can be prevented.

Table 3: Employees required and present at Ahmedabad Regional Passport Office

Employees

Applications/

Employee/ Day

188,906 235,000

Sl No Activity Exiting applications

1 Detailed Scrutiny -Acceptance Stage 160 5 6

2 Scrutiny and cash receipt 96 14 9 11

3 detailed Scrutiny -Travel Agent 160 5 6

4 Detailed Scrutiny - Postal Agent 100 8 10

Scrutiny and cash receipt 14 9 11

5 Dispatch of PPF 160 3 5 6

6 Scanning of Registration Form 300 3 3

7 Detailed Entry 275 3 4

8 PVSR into computer 600 2 1 2

9 Pasting and lamination 240 3 4

10 Signing 300 2 3 3

11 Writing 80 2 10 13

12 Dispatch entry 480 2 2

13 Indexing 125 11 7 8

14 Linking 240 3 4

15 Granting 300 3 3

16 Objections 200 4 5

Others (Admin + Branches) 14

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Total employees 48 56 69

* Assuming 230 working days

But this solution has a shortfall; demand of application processing has been increasing atan alarming rate of 10% to 12% per annum hence the employment demand also increases on the

same line i.e. 10-12% annually except for 2001 where the expected increase is 23%.Now lets look at if the workforce of Ahmedabad RPO is justifiably distributed. This

comparison is made on the basis of table 1 and table 5 given in the case. It can be seen that thereis a huge mismatch in allocation of workforce and requirement of workforce per activity atAhmedabad RPO.

Table 4: Need vs. allocation of workforce per employee

Benchmarking:

From the data table 4 in the case we can form that there are different RPO that areperforming much better than Ahmedabad RPO. For example we can see that RPOs at Delhi and

Hyderabad are comparable in operations to Ahmedabad RPO but has much low backlog in termsof percentage, RPO of Bangalore has 2/3rd that operations of Ahmedabad but 1/10th of its backlogpercentage. Benchmarking of operations at Ahmedabad RPO to that of such RPO which has suchlow backlog might improve the operations at Ahmedabad too.

Table 5: Backlog at different Regional Passport Office

Passport

Office

Application Backlog % backlog

Ahmedabad 189327 42350 22%

Bangalore 125838 2296 2%

Kolkata 112440 16005 14%

Chennai 168087 17944 11%

Delhi 189105 21711 11%

Hyderabad 231809 20816 9%

Visakhapatnam 50463 5190 10%

Process Redesign on basis of routing of application:

Before we start of redesigning the existing service process at Ahmedabad RPO letsrelook at the process such that if some of these can be eliminated or by-passed to deliver a betterprocess. There are two types of passport applications that enter the RPO office, a set that aredirectly applied at RPO and another that arrives at RPO though travel agents.

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Figure 2: Application Process at Ahmedabad RPO

Now lets look at the different features of the service process and how they differ forthese two kinds of applications. It has been given that applications forwarded through travel

agents are less faulty and needs less/ no scrutiny.

1. Applications forwarded through travel agents:

Process like Receiving Application and initial scrutiny can be eliminates hence killing 8

min of processing time. Detailed entry of the details with scanning of registration form

can also be done at the Travel agents end hence killing 6 minutes more.

2. Applications directly applied to the Regional Passport Office.

Redesign of PPF Police verification process:

A basic redesign that can be done for the PPF police verification process is on the basis

that majority of people applying to passport are non criminals hence dont need that thorough run

of application which takes an average of 72 days (on basis of sample data in Table 1), and is

approximately three times the delivery time that is promised. Verification can be done at the

commissioners office against the data records of criminal hence verifying if the applicant is a

non criminal. Verification of address proofs can be requested to be submitted with the

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application thus reducing the hackles of police department and the time taken in PPF

verification.

Redesign of application process:

From the data given in the case it can be seen that approximately 57 days are taken forgranting passports and the main cause of this time is improper filling of application forms, and

non availability of appropriate documents and this is more prone to applications that are directly

submitted to RPO than directed through travel agent. Bringing in this domain knowledge that the

travel agents have developed or making the initial scrutiny more rigorous that the application

form in not rejected on the basis of lack of information or documents will control this timings.

Applying a combination of the above three redesign will help the RPO reduce service

time by a significant amount and hence improve service levels at Ahmedabad RPO.

Reference:

1. Doorva Bahuguna and N. Ravichandran, Ahmedabad Regional Passport Office: Rapid

Response Time by Process Redesign, Management Case, Vikalpa, Vol: 28, July-Sept:

2003.

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