E-Learning Foreign Languages: A Proposed Model for a Greek Institute

Operational limitations — Food for thought

Most services include elements of products. E-Learning operations require appointment scheduling, equipment availability, customer treatment and material delivery. The product is the learning material, the customer services having been very carefully designed in. There is a massive operation to manage.

However, many issues arise in the design of service operations primarily because the customer is so directly and immediately involved in the delivery transactions. The customers are present and involved, and may even serve themselves, so they are integrated with the delivery of the service. The intangibles of service and variability in demand are significant, some of which are explained below.

The designer-maker interface

The market, through the products and services designed for it, greatly affects e-Learning operations systems. A poorly designed product or service fails if market needs and expectations are not met, yet the actual design process may exclude operations managers — their task may be confined to just “make to specification and to cost.” The interface between designers, makers, and deliverers is the point at which conflict can occur, e.g. the makers may despair at the implementation headaches that a particular design gives them. Although design and delivery processes are closely linked a distinction must also be drawn between them.

• Design — conceiving the product or service and drawing up the specifications
• Process design decisions — how to make the product or deliver the service

There is often tension between the creative ideas of program designers and builders, and conflict can occur if designers impose their decisions on producers, “You must do it this way.” Software programmers and e-Learning coordinators have their own subjective experiences of materials, equipment and people. They know what they can do, they understand knotty implementation problems and techniques, and they know the limits of their systems and staff. They may, however, not be inclined to go for new, leading-edge methods, preferring the tried and tested old ways. So modern and creative designs cannot be realized without the problem-solving ability of the implementers.

Nice design but can we build it at this cost?

A sound educational content design may need to be modified for manufacturability (i.e., for the sake of being practical to produce), but designers may feel passionately protective of their work and they may erupt if someone changes the color, shape, material, dimensions, taste etc. Thus we speak of parallel engineering and manufacturability, as Howard Barnett does, which means designing the product and implementation processes together. Can we make it, or must the design change to fit what we can do?

In designing a service we must account for the nature of the customer’s participation in the service process. A badly designed service operation that results in queues, long waiting times, and inefficient service points will soon have the customers complaining. Designs must account for the limitations and constraints of existing equipment, capacity, facilities and expertise. New educational products may be made alongside old products, using existing technology. Product upgrades with new design features will have an effect on the operation that must produce them. A design change at the end stage of product implementation is costly because the bulk of production set up costs has already been incurred, so “patch and make do” may undermine quality and performance objectives.

Design phases

Fully specified designs, which totally define every part of the activity, do not spring fully formed from the designer’s imagination. A design starts as a more general, ill-defined, even vague idea of what might be an appropriate solution to a felt need. Over time this original idea, or “concept,” is refined and made progressively more detailed until it contains sufficient information to be turned into an actual product, service or process. The transition from concept to detailed specification can be divided into the following six phases:

1. Basic research and development
2. Define market needs in various situations – Is market demand or emergent new technology (lower costs, better products) pushing change? – Internal development and up-grading
3. Create the “design”
4. Evaluate alternative designs and agree on which to prototype
5. Do the prototyping and evaluate (design and process of implementation)
6. Finalize and hand over to operations to produce

What is the scope for involvement of operations managers at each of these stages (you might call this “parallel engineering”)?

Reverse engineering

Reverse engineering involves disassembly and re-appraisal of service and repair costs, methods, and times in order to improve design and production methods and add value to the organization and customers. Howard Barnett explains how we can review energy usage, disposal and recycling issues, technical obsolescence and wastage.

Variety vs. standardization

There are many parallels between e-Learning production and traditional manufacturing processes. Having fewer components, materials, processes and techniques will normally lead to more cost effective operations. A few common processes can improve technology and labour utilization.

Even when the product is an online service such as language training, it is important to ask whether to emphasize developer core skills. In other words, just as with manufacturing physical products, it is reasonable to ask whether the development job can be “de-skilled” or whether the scope of the developer’s job can grow and call for multi-skilling. Investment in new equipment, process technology, or IT systems, etc., may further improve efficiency gains by providing lower unit costs.

Control over the inventory of learning products may improve with fewer suppliers and deliveries of fewer components, because where many processes produce many different products there tends to be lower utilization. Frequent product changes lower productivity, and more staff specialization and higher skills are needed. New process technologies may be less than cost effective in situations of high variety, thus older methods may be retained rather than use expensive technology only occasionally. However, even with unique products there are benefits to be gained from the exploitation of IT systems to support planning, design, component control and communications with customers.

The creative vs. standardization mix

New designs and product upgrades can use existing components and processes, but the designer’s creative freedom is inhibited by such standardization directives, resulting in sub-optimal designs. Good designers push the boundaries in exploiting new materials and applications. They search constantly for new, innovative components, materials, and processes not currently known or used. Their role is to be up-to-date on emergent materials and components and methods, which means scanning supplier catalogues. They also need to know what is known, approved and available within the organization. The operational temptation is to go for something that is known and available, but technological obsolescence is a real problem. If an e-Learning program provider stuck to a “one size for all” policy of standardization when customers wanted customized products, then the organization might be on the slide.

Quality and reliability

Good product design supports manufacturing ability to produce required quality. With an inadequate design, operations end up by making “a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” and nobody is satisfied — least of all the market. Adoption of new technologies and raw materials requires rigorous inspection and testing to ensure high-quality and reliable output. Safety-critical products — hardware, software and human systems — are particularly vulnerable. Specifications and process capabilities should be modified, for example, to suit tolerance levels while error and failure rates will increase in probability of occurrence as the number of process stages and components rises (see Karl Albrecht and Lawrence Bradford, The Service Advantage).

Conclusion: Recommendations

Overall, remember that even sound, innovative designs and technology are not leakproof but are subject to ageing, becoming superseded, and turning uncompetitive as rivals enter the arena. Therefore, I recommend that a Value Analysis cost-reduction technique be used to identify product and service functions relating to cost and price. Furthermore, analyse the design and construction to eliminate elements that don’t contribute to function.

Value Analysis evaluates the utility, esteem and market values of a product or service (Market Value = Utility Value + Esteem Value). David Campbell and his colleagues identify 12 steps in this analysis which specifically aims to cut costs of established products or services without reducing their value. Cost and construction of product design features are evaluated and elements not contributing to function are eliminated. Value engineering applies Value Analysis principles and procedures in design. Value Analysis, Value Engineering and variety reduction all need a creative task force whose job it is to target products, services and procedures that offer big potential savings and quality improvements.

Value analysis evaluates a product’s or service’s:

• Utility — how useful or functional the product is seen to be.
• Esteem value — what the customer or user values in the product features (aesthetic and subjective).
• Market value — what the market will pay for the product (given Utility value plus Esteem value).

Value analysis consists of the following 12 steps:

1. Which product or service? — Complex products and services may give the best returns (scope for simplification). Products and services with large usage offer greater savings overall. Old products and services may benefit from new technical developments.
2. Obtain cost data — Accurate marginal cost data is needed. Value analysis aims to reduce costs. However, apportioning overheads is difficult so exclude these from the value analysis exercise (unless it is the overhead elements themselves that are being analyzed).
3. Identify and define components — Understand them and their characteristics and challenge traditional assumptions.
4. Define all performance functions that the essential product or service must perform — This is important in order to satisfy basic customer requirements and thus secure market entry. It is also important if the essential product or service is going to delight the customer and be a WINNER in the market. The whole team should be involved in doing this. Use brainstorming to challenge assumptions. Identify functions that the customer may be looking for, not just those that the operations manager thinks are essential or non-essential.
5. Obtain current and future demand data — Marketing research and data collection methods and instruments can be particularly helpful here, such as observations, focus groups, surveys, experiments, questionnaires, mechanical devices for response measurement, sampling plans, interviewing and meticulously creative analysis of primary and secondary customer data findings.
6. Focus on the primary function only — Eliminate those items from Step 4 which are secondary or support functions and agree on the top primary function.
7. Brainstorm on primary function feasibility — Create as many alternative ways as possible of achieving the primary function.
8. Evaluate alternative costs — Do this after brainstorming, not during brainstorming, because it inhibits idea generation. At this stage only broad-brush costings are required.
9. Investigate the cheapest alternatives — Examine, for instance, the three cheapest alternatives and carry out a detailed feasibility study of performance and cost for each.
10. Select the best option and develop requirements.
11. Return to additional or secondary functions — Functions eliminated at Step 4 can now be re-introduced and requirements built back in. Consequently, loop back through Steps 7, 8, and 9 to produce a detailed design in each case.
12. Win acceptance — As with variety reduction, complacency and ingrained practices can block new implementation. The Value Analysis team must communicate and sell their case effectively (with detailed cost and savings, implementation plans, models or prototypes).

Value analysis is a familiar cost-reduction technique. Some designers may think it undermines good design. If the design was sound at the outset, then to the designers, Value Analysis is redundant. Yet designs and technology change. Sound innovative designs age and become uncompetitive while rivals catch up. For example, rear-view mirrors in cars were once screwed to the roof panel (expensive, involving fasteners and drilling). Mirrors are now glued to windscreens (using cheaper adhesive technology).

With the introduction of Web-based foreign language learning at the institute, individualized learning becomes independent, convenient in access, cost saving, easily updated and extends the scope of effective teaching in many new subject areas. Furthermore, it enhances the school’s profitability and market image while at the same time improving the availability of supporting material through Web site links to other documents and systems. Last but not least, it may constitute a breakthrough in foreign language instruction ameliorating not only the quality of foreign language acquisition, but also setting a competitive benchmark for education in Greece at all levels.

References

AICC CMI Subcommittee, “Document No. CMI001 — CMI Guidelines for Interoperability Rev. 2.01”, 1 February 1998.

Albrecht, K. and Bradford, L.J. (1990). The Service Advantage, London: Dow Jones Irwin.

Barnett, H. (1996). Operations Management, London: Macmillan Press.

Campbell, D. et. al. (1999). Business Strategy: An Introduction. London: Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd.

Farance, F. and Tonkel, J. (1998). LTSA Specification: Learning Technology Systems Architecture. Available at ltsc.ieee.org/wg1/files/ltsa-400.html

Fitzsimmons, J. A. and Fitzsimmons, M. J. (1994). Service Management for Competitive Advantage. London: McGraw-Hill.

Harrison, M. (1993). Operations Management Strategy. London: Pitman Publishing.

Martinich, J. S. (1997). Production and Operations Management: An Applied Modern Approach. Toronto: John Wiley and Sons Inc.

Oakland, J. S. (1992). Total Quality Management. (2nd Ed). London: Heinemann.

Slack, N. et. al. (1995). Operations Management. London: Pitman Publishing.

Stonebreaker, P. W. and Leong, G. K. (1994). Operations Strategy: Focussing Competitive Excellence. New York: Allyn and Bacon.

Sweeney, A. et. al. (2000). An Introduction to Management Science: Quantitative Approaches to Decision Making. London: Southwestern-Thomson Publishing.

Teboul, J. (1991). Managing Quality Dynamics. London: Prentice Hall.

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