Consider the following journey taken by an application for a fishing licence

Consider the following journey taken by an application for a fishing licence. The customer requesting the licence either calls the licensing office, writes to them or on-line requests an application form. However it arrives, the request for a form is batched at the end of each day and, the following morning, sent to a review clerk who makes a note of the appropriate form (there are four alternatives) and any other inserts such as information leaflets to be sent to the customer. At the end of the day these are batched and sent to a despatch clerk the following morning.

The despatch clerk manually inserts the appropriate forms and information sheets into envelopes, prints out an address label and posts these to the customer. Sometimes this is done on the same day, at busier times this can take anything up to three days.

When the customer receives the form and information, he or she fills it in and returns it to the licensing office. On arrival the applications are opened and sorted according to which kind of licence is being requested. The four batches of applications (four different forms) are sent to issuing clerks the following morning. If the application form is in order, the issuing clerk prints out the appropriate licence and signs it. At the end of the day the forms are batched to be sent to the despatch clerks the following morning. The time for the issuing clerks to make a decision can vary between half a day and five days. The despatch clerk then sends the licence to the customer. This may be done the same day but can take up to three days at busy times.

(a) Draw a value stream map for this process, making any assumptions that you feel are appropriate.

(b) Given your assumptions, what is the value-added throughput efficiency of the process?

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