Vishwadeep Khatri

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Hotel-wide Enhance Customer Loyalty Reduce Employee attrition Productivity/Efficiency Improvement Improve Work-life balance Reduce Billing errors/losses Developing better performance measures/ metrics Increase Revenue Reduce Cost Front Office Operations/ Sales & Marketing Reduce wait time during peak check-in time Reduce wait time during peak check-out time Eliminate billing errors and improve accuracy Reduce No shows Increase Occupancy Optimal utilisation of the current product mix (rooms) to increase revenue Increase customer delight at the Executive Club Reduce/eliminate loss calls (Operators area) Accuracy of information Food and Beverage Service / Production To maintain optimal inventory Minimize wastage/pilferage Standardized output of Food and Beverage Reduce the time from order to service Optimal utilization of current product mix (F&B/Outlets) to increase revenue Accommodation Operation (Housekeeping) Reduce the turnaround time of making/turning down a room Standardization of cleanliness across areas Purchase/Stores Reduce Inventory surplus Cost Benefit Analysis between cost of inventory and cost of storage of products where prices vary seasonally Standardize the operating procedure of issuance to various departments Reduce the turnaround time of issuance to various departments Human Resources/ Personnel Accuracy of payroll Documentation management Reduce the turnaround time of recruitment Reduce the turnaround time of relieving Increase the employee satisfaction rate

Dear All, An article appeared in 2005 where efforts of some of the Pharma Companies were highlighted. I highlighted at that forum that it is a mistake to consider GMP as the greatest achievement. Without revealing the names of companies, I am happy to say that our association has paid some rich dividends in this sector.

Dear All, Here is an example of Six Sigma project that succeeding in bringing down door-to-balloon time from 90 minutes to 60 minutes for Heart Attack patients in a Hospital. Click here to read the article I invite comments from Health care fraternity on their views about implementation in core healthcare operations in addition to billing, administration, ward related functions (where we see most Six Sigma action generally). Regards, VK

Cummins has planned Six Sigma implementation with entire IT workforce after years of success at Manufacturing. Click here to read the article

Dear Namrata, The next step could be a Benchmark Six Sigma Green Belt training. Once you complete the training, you shall be a part of community with thousands of members (includes health services participants) that helps each other with good application of Six Sigma techniques on similar projects. Regards, VK

Here is detail provided by one participant who is planning to initiate a Six Sigma project on change requests. Data available is list of CRs (Defects are called as Change requests), entered date, closed date, whether a CR is a Critical one or not. Month-on month there are 200 CRs with about 20 Critical ones. How do we calculate sigma value for such data for Product quality? We only have a continuous data of CRs. The application is very old and there are about 1400 open CRs as of date. Clarification 1: Pl let me know how to compute current sigma level for this type of assignment. Cost optimization is one of the key Ys. This is dependent on customer staff, our side staff and ongoing maintenance expenses. But for this we do not have customer resource loading info and also salary cost. Clarification 2: So how to consider these customer cost parameters? Second important Y is reducing Critical CRs. This is dependent on Specification clarity, development quality, QA quality etc. But how to measure these aspects quantitatively? Hence all my research is ending up in qualitative analysis. Pl help me in making this quantitative and arrive at data based action points. Opinions on clarifications are welcome.

Here is a link from Toyota way of thinking. Click Here to View Some of them seem simple but very important. Missing the Go, See can be very risky. Blind reliance of data can hide facts. Comments are welcome.

The general feedback is that BPO's have good growth prospects due to following reasons. The cost pressures are leading to a larger need for outsourcing. Global financial crisis is resulting in job cuts.Many of these jobs are going to be outsourced with a cheaper cost.However, the pressures and stress levels are also on the rise as BPOs have to deliver at lower costs and adhere to stricter standards. This leads to need for Six Sigma projects. The good news for many BPOs is that clients are more willing to partner in Six Sigma projects due to their pressing needs. As clients are willing to contribute and are flexible in bringing changes, there is bigger scope for Black Belt projects which were hampered in the past due to client non-involvement.

Following tools are commonly used in Software Quality Assurance. Control ChartsCorrelation and Regression AnalysisHypothesis Testing - ANOVA, t test, F test, Chi square testNon parametric tests (for data that does not follow a distribution)Forecasting modelsOrthogonal arrays for test cases.Pugh matrixQuality Function Deployment All these tools can be understood well through a Six Sigma training program along with underlying philosophy and software practice.

Dear Yatin, Your ideas seem good. You just need to see that each project should pose a reasonable challenge and should make business sense. Reasonable challenge - The problem statement should be such where the cause and the solution are unknown. Also, if the solution can be reached with some data analysis and a brainstorming session, it may not be worthwhile to be taken up as a Six Sigma project. Business Sense - The project should promise good business benefit for business leaders to like it and approve it. Regards, VK

Dear Lokesh, Attendance and Payroll processes may have opportunities of improvement in terms of accuracy (correctness), productivity (turn around time improvement). You need to identify a pain area (or an improvement area) and convert that into a project charter. Regards, VK

Namrata, Application in tourism can also be similarly understood. Example projects in tourism - Eliminating delay in pick-up service. Improving guest expectation capturing processes. Enhancing guest experience on key parameters. Reducing or eliminating defects/ errors in itinerary/tickets. Improving guest feedback in tourism services If you elaborate your interest areas, I can elaborate more. Regards, Vishwadeep Khatri

Hello Namrata, Six Sigma is about identifying and carrying out worthwhile improvement projects using tried and tested management techniques. Example projects in Healthcare - the following types of projects are being carried out in health care. Reducing or eliminating invoicing errors Reducing patient checkout time. Reducing patient complaints Reducing complaint resolution time Control spending over time Reducing admitting delays Reducing medicine administration errors Reducing medication delays Improving bed utilization Increasing number of surgical operations per week. Improving patient and relative feedback Examples of companies who have been implementing Six Sigma in Healthcare- Among users in the healthcare early pioneers include GE Healthcare Florida Hospital, Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital in Houston, Texas, have reported excellent benefits with Six Sigma. Healthcare Excellence Institute in US has helped hospitals in bed management and faster processing utilizing lean management methods. Among Indian companies, Benchmark Six Sigma has had participation in training programs from leading healthcare organizations including Apollo Hospitals.

Dear Basker, As per the most accepted definition, Six Sigma is a Business Improvement Methodology. If you are using the methodology, you are implementing Six Sigma. If you are referring to Six Sigma as a measure, we check defects or probability of defects. You may have a product, that is flawless and you may rate the process to be performing at Sigma Level equal to Six or more. (similar to Dabbawalas of Mumbai). To me, you shall be considered a Six Sigma enthusiast if you embrace the methodology and benefit from it. You shall be a Six Sigma expert if you gather expertise in using the world best techniques in a wide variety of situations and generate business benefit out of them. I am curious about your product. Can you elaborate about your flawless product? Regards, VK

Fowzie, My views are - If you report out every day, you will need sample size based on daily volumes. In case you report out on a monthly basis and data is fairly randomized (similar call types on different days of the week), it may be OK to take 1800/20 = 90 daily if 1800 is your monthly sample size. Any comments by others on this opinion are welcome.

Fowzieh, To calculate sample size in your example, we can proceed like this - Margin of error - Let us assume 1%. This means when you report 98% as accuracy, it could actually vary between 97% and 99% Confidence Level - 95%. This means that 95% of the case shall lie within margin of error. Population size - 4000 Response Distribution - 95% This means you expect 95% accuracy normally. If you do not know what to expect this should be taken as 50%. Now use http://www.raosoft.com/samplesize.html to get sample size. You can use a formula alternatively. You shall get a sample size of 1254. If you are willing to accept 2% margin of error, the sample size reduces to just 410. If you do not know response distribution (and assume 50%) you shall get large sample sizes. In this case, instead of 1254, you shall get a size of 2825. You can notice that if you are willing to live with higher margin of error (say 5%), you can manage with smaller sample sizes. Let me know if you have any questions. Regards, VK

Yes definitely you can. You need to identify a customer pain area or a business pain area or worthwhile opportunity for improvement. Just make sure that the improvement if realized shall make business sense and the idea does not seem to be very high risk idea (this means the probability of success should not be too low) If you have already identified one such area, do mention it here and I shall provide you some more inputs on how to proceed. If you have not done so, speak to business managers and explore if you can find one. Cheers! VK

One of the most powerful techniques which is common in Lean and Six Sigma is Mistake Proofing (Poka - Yoke). We must try and apply the appropriate mistake proofing mechanism wherever relevant. To refresh our thoughts, the three approaches are Warning, Shut down and Auto-correction. Do reply to this message about the latest mistake proofing implementation that you carried out so that others can learn from it.

I expect some professionals from healthcare to respond to this message from Nithi Ratnam - I would like to know what activities Quality as a support function can control and measure in a Service Industry which is aligned towards health care. I am new to this industry and would appreciate some inputs and suggestions from experienced people of similar background. Thanks & Regards, Nitin Rathnam. DATE: Tue Nov 11, 2008

This discussion was started on Sun Jul 20, 2008 on Yahoo Groups I have noticed a common challenge in BPOs. The Client organisation (In US, UK) collects survey data from its customers about satisfaction level based on service provided by Indian BPO. Indian BPO works towards improving its internal quality scores to enhance customer satisfaction (Csat) through a Six Sigma project but fails in reaching a sustainable improvement in Csat. The reason is - poor correlation is found between the internal quality scores (assessed with best of intentions and good measurment system) and client reported CSat scores. Now this frustrates the Indian BPO as they can not directly assess CSat in a different way as they are not authorized to speak directly to Client's customers. What ideas do you have to resolve a situation like this? ______________ FOLLOWING RESPONSES WERE RECEIVED Hi all, I had experienced the same as its tough to co-relateCustomer C-Sat levels and Internal Quality Scores. The solution which was implemented was to include the C-Sat questions in the Monitoring Sheet where the QA will asses the call in terms of call quality and Customer Satisfaction. In such a case the QA should be familiar with C-Sat requirements of client and should be calibrated with it internally. Thanks Monish. _______________ Hi all, I think this problem is not just akin to Indian BPOs. I was managing the Toronto center for inbound customer finance department for a major american mobile service provider. Now when the Csats were introduced we found that we were lagging way behind centers in Philipines, though on paper we had the agents with the best skill set.We then did some brainstroming for the reason of the same and ways to improve. We adviced our agents to be extra courteous, use polite statements etc.We started scoring calls from the point of view of the customer. Though there is a fall side to this methodolog. Often when we caliberated a call, our agent seemed to be on his game on existing parameters but yet the Csat scores would be poor. eg. A customer calls in to make a full payment to get his lines reinstated and after taking the payment we would need to connect him with activations department.Now if there would be a wait time that could lead to customer getting dissatisfied, also some customers would get angry when told that they would need to be transferred to another department. In such scenarios even though my csr was doing his job to the T, he could get a bad Csat. So we marked each on client parameter and then from customer point of view..yet following the client parameters cannot ensure high Csat scores. Sincere regards, Rahul Srivastava _______________ Hi All, I have worked on a similar scenario for One of the BPO service providers in India for a US Internet Service provider. We were facing a very low Csat scores compared to the internal quality scores. To counter this problem we decided to do a RCA(Root Cause Analysis) for all the surveys which had a Dsat, and a deep dive analysis for the issue why the customer called in based on the current call and the previous trouble tickets logged in. And we found that the majority of surveys where the customer had given a Dsat were either repeat customers or they were the customers who were no t happy with the wait time. SO we tried to redesign the internal quality sheet in a way where the agent cannot leave the customer on hold without refreshing him about the status of the problem for more than 2 mins which as per customers was and expected hold time in technical scenarios. Then we also tried to look into the cases where the customer was a repeat caller for the SAME PROBLEM and also for DIFFERENT PROBLEM. Proper steps to ensure the connectivity issue has be resolved(which was the most common issue)was implemented by the call quality team where the a certain SOP to test the customers connectivity was followed so that he does not have any problem with the same issue he has called in for. Also it was made mandatory of some tips to avoid the issues and also few common troubleshooting steps to be performed by the customer before he calls in were to be given to the customer on every call. This had a great impact and we started seeing a little positive co relation between the Internal Quality scores and the Csat score. For the above process to be implemented people doing the RCA should have a strong understanding of the process they are auditing. Thanks, Balasubramanyam ________________ Hi rahul, How do we escape from the fact that the SAME CSAt form is sent to the same group of people, working for the same organization, but one group getting higher evaluation? From my experience, people will most often take things for granted or take a very general view of things. the EXPECT things to be sorted out, rather not have the problem in the first place. So say you solve the problem of a customer who has called in 3 times for the same issue, or even multiple times for multiple issues & your CSR gave the BEST of service, was polite, courteous, solved problem your CSAT is doomed. the customer would take out all his frustration that he has due to the problem that he has with your bank/company with the LAST AGENT HE SPOKE TO. You need to have FIRST TIME RESOLUTIONS. Period. If you cannot do that ( I was dealing with a stink bomb of a product myself) but thankfully we could play with our words. We could tell the customers that they might get a call or an email from my deptt asking how I (the rep) helped her/him on THIS particular call. It would NOT be to judge how well the company is doing or satisfaction with the company but with ME. So if such a Qn was asked how would you rate ME?? Most times the customers would say that you were excellent, but I,m not happy with the product/service/company. At this point I'd ask her to mark me an excellent & please do mention this in the comments section. Also I would give them the official e mail address of the deptt so that they could write their view/grievance directly. This really cools people down. Trust me on this. they vent & they now understand that the CSAT id for the AGENT, not the company. Still some would say you were ok or good, to which I'd go with Thank You, & if its not too much of a personal Qn how can I make your experience with ME even better, should the need arise for you to call me next time? Now if I have been GOOD like I have been *trained* properly, there would be nothing much except that the customer still has some apprehensions with/about the company/product/service. Since the customer would not be able to point any holes in my service I'd pitch the CSAT now focusing on ME & not the company/product/service. Either we can spend our energies finding excuses or spend them finding solutions. Its our call.... Regards Amit Mitra ___________________ Dear VK......... As one may think, there can b few initiatives that can b taken by Indian BPO arm to bridge the gap. 1. Get to know the ultimate customer's clear expectations in terms of deliverables and respective quality parameters and its ratings, as everyones' reqmt does vary. (ofcourse thro' their own client) 2. Chart a specific format and feedback mechanism which suits the respective customer, as there cannot be one panacea for all ills. 3. A commonly agreed scorecard need to b developed and agreed to, between the BPO and its' client, for calculating and presenting the findings. Once the above steps are achieved, the BPO arm, client and ultimate customer are in sync, and soon the system becomes a routine, as everyones' expectations and deliverables are clearly tied up! Thanks & Warm Regards, S.Srikanth ____________________ Hi, I've been with the BPO sector for 8 years now, with more than 5 years of it being in the transaction quality improvement role. No correlation is normally found between the internal quality measurement system and the client CSat scores becasue they are 2 different models. The quality measurement model is normally process driven and acts as a checklist of whether the process SOP is being adhered to or not. Practically, a lot of process SOPs are such that it would not leave the customer satisfied, as he doesn't get what he was looking for. The quality model would normally ensure that the agents are following the methods and procedures that are being followed. In comparison, the client CSat model does not have anything to do with the process SOPs. It normally just checks as to whether the customer was satisfied or not. It would have components such as: Agent being knowledgeableAgent being courteousAgent being able to provide solutions to the customer's satisfactionEffective listeningProviding information beyond what the customer asked for (customer delight)Normally, such parameters are not a part of the QA form/ checklist. To solve such a situation, the parameters measuring CSat can be incorporated in the QA checklist. The people who are doing QA checks should be calibrated with the client team conducting surveys so that they develop a capability to measure customer's satisfaction level on the above parameters just by listening to the conversation between the agent & the customer. Depending on the relationship between the vendor and the client, the vendor can even suggest changes in the SOP, such that the business does not suffer and the customers are satisfied with what they get from the call centre. Once the QA group starts measuring the agents on these parameters, obviously the agents would get their share of feedback as to how they performed. This can also go as a TNI to the training group to be changes at the base level. The other way could be that the QA measurement checklist would become more customer centric than process centric. It should be more solution based instead of being SOP driven. This would lead the client to make more customer driven SOPs while keeping the business sense intact. I have personally done both the models, and they both have given very favourable results. Regards Sanjeev __________________ Hi all: This is a very important question which I had asked in many social networking sites (not necessarily to do with BPO, however holds good everywhere). My criteria is NOT TO measure customer satisfaction at all. You might consider this as controversial. Let us consider some facts. a) According to a Juran Institute survey, more than 90 percent of the Fortune 200 companies are convinced that maximizing customer satisfaction maximizes profitability and market share. Yet fewer than 2 percent are able to measure bottom-line improvements from documented increases in levels of customer satisfaction. b.) In the U.S. auto industry, the average repurchase rate of satisfied customers from the same car company is less than 30 percent. The corresponding figure for the appliance industry is below 45 percent. c) Anywhere from 15 percent to 40 percent of customers who say they are satisfied defect from a company each year. (Source: Power of Ultimate Six Sigma (2003) In order to increase profitability, BPO firms MUST concentrate on defection and retention measurement as opposed to mere Csat. Scenario: a particular customer Mr. X (based in London) have been in constant touch with the service centre for a particular product he has purchased (assume a laptop). He is a novice on computers, and each time he has a problem he calls the company for a fix. He has called past three months on an average of 4-5 times a week. The BPO of the computer firm (which is located in Bangalore) is prompt in providing the required details for the fix. But each time Mr X tries to fix his laptop (mostly software related problem), another possibility rises. But do understand that the BPO is 'prompt' in its service. 1) One week after his purchase, a representative of the company asks the client on his new purchase. The client seems to be happy except for some glitches with the software OS. 2) The representative calls Mr X again after three weeks. This time his satisfaction index has dropped. His complain is still to do with the software. The rep: diligently files his report saying that the call-centre service is mediocre. 3) Every week after that, the rep: still calls the client to enquire on his laptop. And each week there is something wrong or the other. Offcourse the Client now is very mad at the whole company. CSat has reduced to nothing, the BPO manager is on the firing line. 4) After 3 months of constant communication with the client, the company decided to replace his laptop for a brand new one(which is a latest model to the one he purchased), in addition to a brand new Printer as a compliment. My question is: If you take a Csat info from the client after this replacement, I can bet 110% that his satisfaction would have climbed considerably, moreover, he also would have no complains about the service. Does this mean that the company has increased OR will increase its profitability by giving an extra product to make the client happy? Is there any way to know that the Client would recommend the company to his friends? OR will he purchase an extra laptop (same brand) for his wife? - Loyalty??? So let us look at the following hypothesis: H1. Customer Satisfaction and profitability has very limited corelation, as opposed to Loyalty versus profitability which has a strong positve corelation. H2. Customer defection, retention & differentiation should be the criteria for measurements as opposed to just Csat. So, how are we going to measure a) Defection b.) Retention c) Differentitation (concentrating on customers who provide more than 80% of your business)? That is completely different post altogether. We can work that criteria in this forum itself. In the meantime, let the discussions continue.. Thanks Philip _______________ Hi, I feel that it all depends on the QA form that is used, 1.Is it Client who has prepared the parameters? 2.Is it that we have internally created it (with respect to the SOP) If the case is earlier I am sure all the CSAT parameters would ideally be covered in the QA form. According to me, We need to ensure that the CSAT score card and the QA form should be in Sync. We need to map the set of parameters directly or indirectly. Usually CSAT checks if the Agent has Adequate product and process knowledge, If the Agent was courteous to the customer, Was he able to answer all the questions asked by the customer confidently. If we can implement these major parameters in the QA form I think we can work towards the goal. If the QA form adheres to Product knowledge and Soft Skills in a much broader way then I think there would be no problem in achieving the desired CSAT scores. -- Regards, Nitin Rathnam. ____________________ Dear All, The Csat mostly covers the following areas: It covers all Client un-set expectations ! ! !. As we all know that the expections are clearly defined in SLA, and all our internal QA system ensures that all expected deliverables are met or not. Most of us are trying to meet our client expections but few of us are trying to understand what are the un-set expectations from our Clients. The quality guru Juron says there are five phases in all Product/Project development across industry: 1. Requirements Gathering 2. Design & Development 3. Implementation 4. Operations. 5. Client perspection We all try to meet our client expections until Operations phase but not realizing what Client perception is. This is only possible unless and until we become Strategic Partner for our clients. Most of the clients are expressing their un-set expections through Csat . Hence, we need to first discuss with our clients what exactly they want from us from Business Strategic partner perspective apart from all SLA Deliverables. Based on the inputs, discussion from Client, we shall develop internal Dashboard and then work towards. After some time, we shall correlate these two and measure where are we in terms of improvement. All what I said above is based on my own experience where one of our client invited us to participate in their strategic discussions and covered how we helped them to achieve their business goals acting as a strategic partner. Hope this helps. Regards, Yoganandan R. _______________ Dear All, Thanks for spending time on the quiz question. I am sure there are hundreds of people have benefited as experienced BPO professionals responded with their "PEARLS OF WISDOM" I would like to take this opportunity to drive home a point here and this is not just for BPO's, this is for everyone, irrespective of INDUSTRY and FUNCTIONAL AREA. Six Sigma is about starting with VOC and then finding an approprite internal metric (which may be a part of VOB). This situation was a CLASSIC example of a big VOC-VOB gap. Doing more of Lean or Six Sigma, we reduce this gap and try to reach a level where we evaluate ourselves exactly the same way as the customer evaluates us. (Or try to reach as close as possible) To explore other parallels-- 1. Does this not happen in HR where HR Managers look at their KPI and forget their VOE (employees). 2. Also in Manufacturing who do not look at the Voice of Market but spend time driving their internal KPI's 3. Or the so called customer relationship managers from Banks who want to meet you to sell new services and do not respond to your queries. Another related Six Sigma concept is that it is cheaper to do Six Sigma and retain existing customers and grow with references (by focusing well on VOC) as compared to going the costly way of attaining new customers (while earlier customers keep shifting to other products and services). Cheers! VK

Dear SJ, Some of the topics that you initiated in this group can be pasted at Fraternity to initiate discussions. We are short of content on the Freternity. If you are able to finish the YahooGroups and articles pasting from this group to that one, I will be able to start inviting members there. Regards, VK

ANUBHAV GUPTA REPLIED TO THIS TOPIC Although the mail was not meant for me I can throw some light on this. Desensitizing the Process to variation in the dominant cause is just like elimination a factor from the vital X. For example a paper gets torn by pen pressure which is then a Vital X we have modified the process to make paper double layered and now the pen pressure is not a vital X i.e. either it does not effect the paper at all or the coefficient of correlation amongst tear property and pen pressure has reduced drastically say from 0.9 to 0.02 Secondly, feedforward control refers to the correction we send to the output when we know that there is a particular shift in the result. e.g. if we are producing a salt solution to be packed in bottled at 10% concentration and a new process introduction has made our resultant solution to 9% instead of 10%. Hence we have two option. one is to monitor the concentration of output and vary input accordingly to achieve 10% (this is feedback, where we change input) or we just add another 1% of salt to the output solution (this is feedforward where we monitor output and accordingly alter the output itself and not the input). I hope this throws some light on the approach of these improvement techniques. Regards, Anubhav Gupta Process and Systems Improvement Manager Lancashire Double Glazing Ltd. Preston, UK

Dear All, I have come across questions regarding improve phase where participants want to know specific techniques for how variation can be reduced. Fixing the obvious based on knowledge of a dominant cause of variation. This may include mistake proofing or removal of a vital X (if it is NVA). Desensitizing the process to variation in dominant cause. Feedforward control based on a dominant cause. Feedback control. Making the process robust to variation in causes. 100% inspection (automated is better here) or increased inspection. Moving the process center closer to the target (in case target is center of specification limits). If you want to discuss any of these in more detail, do post messages. These seven approaches can be used either in improve phase (to reduce variation and increase sigma level) or for process control in general (even if you are not doing a six sigma project)

Dear All, Post your comments inthis discussion string by replying to this message. SURESH S POSTED THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE ON YAHOO GROUPS ON 28 JUN 2007. Hi Greetings, I am working for BoA, Medical billing project. As far as concerned about our process, we are not very sure when and what time we used to receive the files. Its not just simple as like data entry work, some of the claims need to be analysed using the concepts. One of the major factor is our team strength. Since it is a big client, we feel unease to balance the files equally to the users. Due to this, some of the users getting lot of transactions and few are getting very less transaction files. We would like to start a project to enhance the production of the individual, so that it should be satisfied with both the parties. (employee & employer). Hope the people related to Medical billing domain will surfacing the same one. Please advice if you have any sample project to focus on. Regards, Suresh S LATHA RANGAMANI POSTED THE FOLLOWING RESPONSE Hi Suresh, I have handled the Claims department and feel that this is what you can try to do: 1) First sort the claims according to the received date. 2) Next you should also sort it according to the value of each file 3) This you can distribute for processing as each claim prosessor will have the equal nos of files for transaction. Otherwise if you distribute it according to number, one person is likely to have less area of transaction and others will have more and the work will not get over. Let me know if this works out. Bye Latha GV VENKATESAN POSTED THE FOLLOWING COMMENT Pl. find below some of the suggestions: 1. Claim Categories should be defined with seperate group of claims allocated to each category. 2. Time required for analyzing each claim category must be established. 3. Now,sort the claims as per the recd., date - category - allocate to the team members accordingly. Regs/Gv