Our CHL Business Simulation is a team based, fun-filled, experiential, interactive and real time process simulation. Participants assume roles of customers of CHL as well as the management and operational roles of CHL.
CHL is COE’s DHL, i.e., a fictitious logistics company who provides mail delivery services within Singapore covering locations Woodlands, East Coast, Changi and Jurong.
The focus of our CHL business simulation is on learning concepts and tools in a pleasant way. Hence, CHL is powered by action-learning and a series of debriefs.
After the 1-day session, you walk away with an understanding of applicable skills and tools such as lean six sigma and creative problem solving with emphasis on customer centricity, value stream mapping and SCAMPER and reverse brainstorming.
Additionally, you get to discover your and your team’s innovation potential through our Innovation Readiness tool.
See CHL in action.
Our CHL Business Simulation is designed to deliver measurable business results.
No matter whether we deploy our simulation for teaching Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Customer Centricity, Lean Innovation, Lean Six Sigma, or Strategic Workforce Planning, we always measure customer satisfaction and process performance.
Over three simulation days (all within 8 hours), participants experience how they are able to improve process performance from about 50% at Day 1 to 100% yield at Day 3 through the application of the tools taught. At the same time, they are able to increase productivity, reduce TIMWOOD, and keep the price stable.
But, customer satisfaction scores increase drastically.
The set of tools introduced to the participants depends on the theme of the workshop and the learning objectives.
In between the simulation days – that take only minutes – tools are introduced and their application explained. The real utilisation of these tools on the CHL process is left to the participants. Making mistakes is part of the game and amplifies the learning effect.
The selection of tools explained during our CHL Business Simulation depends on the objectives and the theme of the workshop.
For instance, for teaching Lean Six Sigma, the focus is on learning the DMAIC methodology. So, a simplified version of the powerful Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is core to this workshop. In other words, the definition of value added steps and takt time are two central topics necessary to improve the process.
To the contrary, the objective of workforce planning is served with tools like Takt Time, processing time and workforce needed. Moreover, Workforce utilisation is calculated and turned into change of workforce allocation.
The Takt Time at Day 1 is just 19 seconds. This means, that every process step that takes 19 seconds or more to complete will build up WIP. Hence, if “Identify Sender and Receiver” requires about 30 seconds, at least two FTE (Full Time Equivalent) are needed as shown in the Workforce Utilisation table for Registry Officer.
Other steps, however, show great potential for saving workforce.
Most importantly, our CHL Business Simulation allows the display of real life data as it is produced.
Of course, at the end of each simulation day CHL data are collected. As a result, it is possible to feed them into MS Excel, MS Power BI or any other visualising tool. Hence, with the data in the computer, analysis tasks can be conducted and plots can be produced.
However, the power of data really becomes obvious when everyone is made aware of them to draw conclusions and suggest improvements following the Lean concept Visual Control.
In the picture, for example, Day 1 data suggest a growing turn-around-time over package number. This is a typical sign for a bottleneck in the process. Finding it and closing the gap is rather easy.
Many other concepts can be elaborated using our CHL Business Simulation.
Innovation
For teaching Innovation and Change management and Innovation and Productivity, the focus is on learning Creative Problem Solving (CPS) tools (Buffalo University).
For example, tools like SCAMPER, Reverse Brainstorming, Idea Box, Forced Connections or Analogies, amongst others, are explained in the context of our CHL Business Simulation for solving the apparent problems.
These problems are first highlighted by applying some Lean tools like Value Stream Mapping, Takt Time Analysis, and others before they get tackled using CPS.
In other words, Creativity and Lean tools are combined to build a powerful toolbox for solving business problems in an innovative and fun way.
For instance , our Lean Innovation Training (LIT) is a powerful way to do exactly this.
With a certain number of participants, our CHL Business Simulation can become a competition.
Then customers have the chance to compare multiple service providers on performance and service mindset.
The customers of these service providers, of four CHL companies, CHL Yellow, CHL Green, CHL Pink and CHL Beige, competing for the big purchase order.
At the end, the winning team is awarded.
In conclusion, the focus of our CHL Business Simulation is on experiential learning of a variety of tools in a fun and memorable way.
Our CHL Business Simulation works for management, supervisors and individual contributors in the same way.
CHL is a mere vehicle to carry many different concepts for solving business problems. It sheds light not only on “hard factors” like turn-around-time (TAT) issues and defects but also on “soft factors”.
Very often, long TAT has its root cause in communication and collaboration break downs. Certainly, CHL reveals that easily and offers the opportunity to overcome those.
When people walk away after CHL with a smile on their face and statements like “Let’s SCAMPER our own process!” you know that CHL has left an impression.
Architect of High-Performing Organisations
