Guillermo_Anaylsis

Bottlenecks in Application Processing Application processing is a huge part of Citi’s core business. Over the last two weeks, I have reviewed the processing of 10 applications. The times are broken down from the start of application to the final sale. Inserting the data into a chart allowed me to determine the average times the applications spent in each department, as well as the throughput time. In the following paragraphs, I am going to discuss bottlenecks that exist in the process and solutions to overcome these bottlenecks. A bottleneck is a constraint within the system that limits throughput. Queue time is the time that an application waits for a resource, while the resource is busy with something else. The queue time is greatest when going through a bottleneck (Chase, 2006). The resource in this case, is the employees or underwriters of the applications. The queue time that exist in application process is when the application is just sitting and waiting for the resource to review application for an approval. My main bottleneck exists in the underwriting department. The application sits in the underwriting department an average of 12.36 minutes with a range from 6 minutes up to 23 minutes. The application can take about 5 minutes to actually review, but the other average of 7 minutes, the application is sitting in queue waiting for someone to review it. A solution to the underwriting department is to ensure that the company is properly staffed especially in the peak hours of business. The company should do an analysis of when the underwriters receive the most application and ensure there is enough staff in this peak time. The company needs to ensure that employees are well trained and knowledgeable about policies to approve application more readily, but with the same accuracy. Overall, the application process needs to eliminate the amount of time a application remains in queue waiting for the resources to review. The underwriting department needs to do a complete analysis of its applications and develop ways to ensure the application will move faster through the process. The underwriting improvement would decrease the throughput time and ensure the customer service with the least amount of waiting time.