Improving public sector service delivery: a developing economy experience

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Emerald in International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management on 10/09/2018, available online: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPPM-05-2017-0129 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.© 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: The Pension Trust Company (PTC) in Ghana is the sole agency responsible for the management of the first-tier pension scheme as well as processing of claims submitted by beneficiaries for this scheme. The claim processing system at PTC was wrought with significant delays resulting in severe customer dissatisfaction and hardship to retirees. Hence, a new system – Age 54+ project – was developed to address the problems related to claims processing. The purpose of this paper is to report on the efficiency gains from the new claim processing system implemented at PTC and to use the philosophies behind the lean operations concept to explain the results. Design/methodology/approach: Data for this study were obtained from the benefits system of PTC for the period 2009–2013. The data consist of a series of benefits processing time for two groups of 56,000 claimants – those cleared under the Age 54+ project and those cleared under the old processing system. The processes of the two claim processing systems were analysed and their processing times compared. Findings: The new system – Age 54+ – decreased the average processing time for new claims by 20 per cent. The new system is a simple approach which is driven by a “Let’s Start in Time” idea. Originality/value: The operations management literature suggests that process redesign approaches and the implementation of continuous improvement techniques represent mechanisms for achieving performance improvements at governmental agencies. This study shows and discusses the redesign of a social security scheme process using a lean operation concept of waste elimination method and application of kanban to deliver performance improvement.Published versio

Environmental pollution policy of small businesses in Nigeria and Ghana: extent and impact

This study provides a comprehensive assessment of firms’ operation and environmental protection polices in Nigeria and Ghana, where there has been a rising industrial growth amidst low regulatory and institutional frameworks. We analyze the extents to which firms’ adoption of environmental protection policies affect their performances. We use firm-level data of 842 firms (447 for Nigeria and 395 for Ghana) distributed across different regions of both countries for our descriptive and econometric estimations. We find, among other things, that firms’ adoption of internal policies on environmental protection is dismally low in both Nigeria (32%) and Ghana (17%), with policies focused on reducing solid (38%, Nigeria; and 35%, Ghana), gaseous (22%, Nigeria; and 44%, Ghana), and liquid (24%, Nigeria; and 14%, Ghana) pollution. Training appears to be an important intervention that can help improve firms’ adoption of such policies. We also found that firms’ adoption and implementation of environmental protection policies significantly improve their performance

Next Level Service Performance - Intelligent Order Assistants in Automotive After Market

A car is only useful, when it runs properly – but keeping a car it running is getting more and more complex. Car service providers need a deep knowledge about technical details of the different car models. On the other hand car producers try to keep this information in their ownership. Digital data collection takes place every second on the car´s product life cycle and is stored on the car producers´ servers. The contribution of this paper is three-fold: we will provide an overview of the current concepts of intelligent order assistant technologies (I). This corpus is used to come to a more precise description of the specific service performance aspects (II). Finally, a representative empirical study with German motor mechanics will help to evaluate the wishes and needs regarding an intelligent order assistant in the garage (III)