Company Background
Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung (DAV) was one of the worlds largest insurance
companies which is presenting in over 32 countries. The majority of their business was in
Germany with 51% of their business. DAV was also the second largest firm in the industry
in Germany. Recently, DAVs position has been challenged from the emergence of smaller
insurance companies. With the high competition in the market, DAV faced the potential of
losing market share.
SWOT analysis
Process background
DAV understood that customer service was important factor to maintain current customers.
To achieve this goal, DAV needed to improve the quality of its service by reducing
variability in its process. DAV launches a program called Process Measurement and
Improvement, which is bringing a manufacturing-style improvement technique to the
insurance company, to improve the ability to process information without mistakes. To find
out the accuracy levels, DAV takes the New Policy Set-up as a pilot measurement project.
To analyze the data, DAV uses SPC which is traditionally for manufacturing industry.
P-charts are used to measure performance of each person on five components each hour,
and all the records are at the end of the day. All employees have to figure out what
important to measure, and find out a better way of doing it. The project requires employees
commitment at high level since employees are the one who decide what to record,
therefore, if employees do not take the project serious, it will fail.
The project is divided into two phases. The first phase is focused on collecting data, and let
people practicing the SPC charts. The second phase is involved improving the process. To
ensure the successful of the project, the accuracy of data is highly concerned from all
levels of employees.
SPC in service industry
SPC is the application of statistical methods to monitor and control a process to ensure that
it operates at its full potential to produce confirming product. SPC has been used widely
outside of manufacturing industry as an efficient tool. For example, Darden Restaurant use
SPC to measure and control its salmon quality in a large scale. It is harder to apply SPC in
service industry since service is hard to be measured. SPC could be an effective tool to
improve DAV productivity, and customer service. However, DAV faced the following
issues:
1. Better teams do more sampling: the increased sample sizes had become a burden
for team with high accuracy. The sample size should be determined by each
