Designing efficient and management public professional service processes

The opportunities, constraints and limitations of transferring an operations management approach to public professional services are illustrated through a detailed analysis of two alternate designs for a social service process: a flow shop and a continuous intervention process. Trade-offs between cost, quality and timeliness of output and between desirable process characteristics are highlighted through a quantitative example. Professional service organisations are democratic organisations staffed by highly competent and autonomous individuals. Process management is different in such an environment. Understanding the linkages between process design and process management is particularly important in professional service organisations, both for process designers, to ensure that they design manageable processes, and for process managers, so that they are aware of all the possibilities and limitations of the process.