Driver Improvement System Automated Decision
Management System (ADMS)
(Firm: Gritech Solutions)
Published: April 2013
Applies To: Driver Improvement Offices and Teams
Summary: This document provides an overview of a new Automated Decision Management System (ADMS) designed to provide a dynamic, configurable automated decision engine for all Driver Improvement Offices (DIO) decision outcome paths to support the efforts of improving client responsiveness, while at the same time reducing the human effort required to adjudicate a medical report received by the Ministry.
Since 2003, the Content and Workflow Management System was managing the thousands of medical reports received by the Ministry and providing workflow routing based on various configurable parameters. Over time, it was determined that more needed to be done to support the Ministry’s dual objectives of improved turnaround time and workload reduction. The desire was to find a way to automate some of the decision paths based on a decision support engine that could be managed by the business unit managers and support new and changed decision paths in the future, while maintaining the high quality of work produced by the teams.
After investigation and consultation the Automated Processing Project began to define a rules engine for automated decisions and the appropriate reporting to support the oversight of the decisions.
The Automated Processing Management System provides a rules-based approach to automated decision processes along with reporting systems that allow program managers to monitor the success of the automated decisions, and helps to fine-tune the automated decision rules in accordance with the governance model for the Driver Improvement Office.
Introduction
The original system deployed was a flexible content and process management application to ensure medical reports were routed to the appropriate work unit for adjudication and completion. This system provided a configurable application interface that could be changed as needs changed. The goal of this system was to build a framework for future endeavors that would allow additions to the system, rather than requiring a complete rework of the processes and application.
As time went on, it became apparent that a significant amount of work could be driven through a rules engine that could adjudicate a number of report decision paths. It was necessary to ensure that while this new system would provide a whole new working model to the unit, it must complement the existing content and process management application so that the transition to the automated process would be as transparent as possible.
To ensure the new automated decision management system would be integrated with the existing process management system, it was imperative that the design, implementation and deployment take into account the current application framework and that an automated decision management system that extends the existing application be built.
Solution Overview
The new Automated Decision Management System is available real-time to provide automated adjudication of any medical report received by the system. The process of auto decision making is supported by a feature-rich decision engine that allows the business unit to define rules for automated decisions in any number of ways, including whether to make decisions based on the driver’s current driving record as well as any information from the medical report and from the process management system. This allows all of the data that exists on the driver to be considered before a decision is reached. It also provides the business with the ability to define parameters to drive reports for which there are no automated decisions to the appropriate team for human review.
The result is a system, which minimizes the input required by users, and provides smart business logic to ensure that work is routed to the teams best suited for the work, thereby limiting the number of times an item has to be reviewed. The design of the user interface is consistent so users can quickly perform tasks required of them, and consistency of the interface also adheres to the basic principles of user interface design to ensure that users can take existing interface knowledge and apply it to new interfaces and see the behavior they expect.
The key objectives of the system were to:
- Minimize user workload by providing a rules-based decision engine to handle as many of the standard decision paths as possible.
- Provide a rich user interface for defining rules that empower the business to enhance the system, not rely on technology specialists.
- Define the rules engine as a configurable function, so that changes to rules do not requirement application program code changes.
- Enhance the existing application framework to include the new functions within an integrated application environment, to minimize user training.
- Provide a framework for reporting that allowed both standard reports such as productivity and performance to be generated as well as data analytics support for a variety of executive dashboard reporting capabilities.
Medical Reports now come into the system through a single path, and with minimal review and data input, are sent to the automated decision process to adjudication. The system can handle significantly more reports per day because a large percentage of the reports are handled through the automated process. This frees up user analysts to review the more complex cases, which are routed to them by the automated process, when the rules engine determines that this report falls outside the user-driven parameters for automated decision-making.
The business users are now able to edit decision rules and workflow paths as required, without resorting to assistance from IT support resources. This allows the business to quickly define and test new rules and decision paths, maximizing the productivity capabilities of the system.
The ADMS was implemented within the existing application framework for the Driver Improvement Office content and process management system so that user training was minimal and the processing of reports, whether human or automated, follows the same process and uses the same application tools. This provides significant and enduring ROI for the initial system and promises to continue to provide rich, expandable functionality over time.
The new functionality provided by the ADMS has been integrated with the existing reporting functions so that continuity of data analysis allows new and old work to be compared together, showing true improvements in process provided by the new system.
Conclusion
The Automated Decision Management System (ADMS) presents a significant improvement to the Ministry’s daily operations and how the business moves forward with new initiatives over time.
The simplified user interface provides improvements in process time and therefore in SLA commitments to the business stakeholders. The common interface provides immediate usability improvements to all users.
The ADMS is scalable and can handle an unlimited number of decision rules to allow the automated decision making to expand over time to provide further productivity and performance enhancements with no additional application development.
The Automated Decision Management System now satisfies the Ministry’s goal to improve user productivity and service levels with a single, integrated, expandable, easy-to-use enterprise document and process management system that builds on the editing framework and offers continuous improvements for years to come.
Extended Warehouse Management System – Electronics
(Firm: Gritech Solutions, LLC )
Published: Jan 2014
Applies To: Regional Warehouse – Southern California
Summary: This document provides an overview of a new warehouse management system to be used by a regional warehouse located in Southern California. This site will be used as a test site before rolling out globally. The new system will be used to improve the ERP Distribution processes. Directed Order fulfillment will be determined based on bin size, storage location and FIFO. Increased ease of use and trainability will beneficial to allow for role changes on the warehouse floor. This will help to prevent product loss through collusion.
Introduction
The original warehouse management system was unable to track bin sizes and did not properly track how many items were stored in a specified bin. This resulted in users being directed to stock product in locations where an item was unable to fit or where bins were already full. The result was a loss in productivity and user frustration.
Solution Overview
The extended Warehouse Management system allows for the definition of bin sizes, storage locations and FIFO. With this information, the system can
automatically direct the user to a location where an item should be stored or retrieved. Having this information defined in the new system will mean that
users will no longer be directed to locations to put stock away where a bin is full or in a location where an item is too large to fit in a bin.
With the new system, a supervisor will have the ability to assign a specific user to a specified task and can track steps the user has completed. The assigned task or tasks will appear on the users handheld device upon log-in and can be assigned in a priority sequence.
Supervisors will have access to a “Dashboard” where all tasks can be viewed, tracked and assigned. Administrators will also have the ability to pull metrics and reports from the system.
Conclusion
The extended Warehouse Management greatly improved the time required to execute tasks, resulting in an increased order fulfillment rate. The success of the implementation of the new system at the regional location will be used as a baseline for the global rollout.