Balaji Courier Express (BCE)

Round -1

• A training course structured around theory, group exercises and a simulation, where you will be running and operating a realistic business situation. • We will represent typical operational processes in a service business. • We will exaggerate the reality of operational business, helping you to identify common symptoms of inefficiency. • We will teach you a selection of the powerful tools that we use in Lean Six Sigma. • Do not adapt the process you have been instructed to perform. • Exercise is split in Round 1 and Round 2. • No procedural changes are allowed until Round 2, when you will be briefed on what you can do. • In Round 1, we will establish a baseline for process performance. • By all means ask questions for clarification, but you may not always get an answer. Sound familiar? • Spell out your assumptions. • Refer respective computers for related data. • You may find yourself confused and frustrated with the process. We hope you do! It will act as an incentive to change and improve the business! •
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You are all employees of Balaji Courier Express. Established in year 2000, BCE has central Hub is at Aurangabad (Corporate Office) and three Regional offices are at Nagpur, Solapur, Mumbai. BCE’s spread is through 5 area offices namely Thane, Pune, Dhule, Beed and Kolhapur. Also, each taluka place has got a zonal office (400 outlets).
Overall, BCE has 505 employees. BCE has got both corporate and retail customers. You all are part of various teams. Central hub has got 20 employees (Additionally 5 employees are for Finance, accounts HR, etc). While each regional and area office has got 10 employees. Each zonal office has got 1 employee and rests collection and distribution are outsourced.

“You think of delivering, it’s already delivered” is the tag line on which Balaji Express operates within Maharashtra.

Collection of letters happens in more than 500outlets and even at outsourced locations. Letters primarily collected at any location (corporate also through individual collections) first goes to the zonal location where it is coded for incoming and outgoing destination (by 2 letter codes) (2mins) and inscribing of weights in circles for billing verifications (3mins).

Then it goes to nearest area offices (i.e. nearer to zonal office) where-in it is re-weighed (3mins) and categorized as Red, Yellow and Green depending on weights. Additionally, code verification happens which get tagged by a stamping (3mins).

From Area office, every letter travels to nearest Regional office for consolidation (4mins) and verification of billing tariffs (2mins) and coding of the destinations (4mins). This verification is marked by a hologram on every letter (3mins).

All letters travel to Aurangabad from all regional offices for final verification of holograms (2mins), stamping(1mins), verification of weights (2mins) and destination codes (3mins).

Distribution process is also on similar lines i.e. Central hub to Regional office to Area office to Zonal office and then final destinations. Each location verifies the holograms, stamps, a code, weights, etc. and are recorded in per day .xls sheets.

Collection and distribution of letters by all agents is usually done by two-wheelers or bicycles. Region to area to hub and back is usually done by existing private tour operators.

BCE works Monday through Sunday 9 to 6pm.

All deliveries within any town follow below steps: - Coding and Weight measurement at a location – inward person - Hologram and stamping at same location – outward person

For all weight measurements, old fashioned analog scales are used. Typical data for few users is given in attached .xls sheet. Tolerance of this machine is 5gms.

Total delivery time for each letter is usually calculated per fortnight when .xls data consolidation happens at corporate office.

Competitor for the similar courier size takes generally takes around 30hours. BCE data is attached.

Attached .xls sheet representative data for last 2 months of overall dispatches and complaints received for wrong dispatches regarding the deliveries.
Round-2

Collection of letters happens in more than 500outlets and even at outsourced locations. Letters primarily collected at any location (corporate also through individual collections) first goes to the zonal location where it is coded for incoming and outgoing destination (by 2 letter codes) and inscribing of weights in circles for billing verifications. Also, each letter gets its 16digit unique code (UIC).

BCE’s UIC looks like 1119997777111555. Digits 1-3 and 11-13 digits are for Collection center and destination center codes respectively. 4-6 are for overall weight in grams. Digits 7-10 are nearest Rupees amount. Last 3 digits are for employee codes.

Instill the ERP system to track and monitor a centralized system.