Just-in-Time Planning at Mutual Insurance Company of Iowa Case Study

Just-in-Time Planning at Mutual Insurance Company of Iowa - Case Study Example Its image could also be affected in the negative light and bring a halt to the current growing demands for its products as new customers shopping around for insurance products will opt for firms with a good of reputation in terms of faster processing of claims. Resources are overstretched and the company could end up losing new and existing business. Looking at the case at the case even without the advice of consultants or experts a number of assumptions can be made about the company’s personnel and equipment situation. Firstly the company and particularly the Des Moines facility for claim processing is facing human resources crisis. The increase in number of claims flowing in on a daily basis means increased amount of work for the same number of employees. One solution thus is the company to hire more personnel to meet the demands of growing workload. The inventory handling capacity should also increase in terms of equipment; the current equipments were not bought in anticipation of the workload the company is getting today. A permanent solution to this would be to get more modern equipment with a capacity to handle more work and also the facility should be expanded commensurately. The company is also faced with challenges surrounding administrative and workflow management. Claim documents have to pass through the hands of different persons for approval before a customer gets a verdict. The net effect of this is a lot of time taken to process just a single claim and also many people doing just the same work. Precisely this could be causing duplication of effort and therefore under-optimisation. The solution approach taken by Cook of streamlining workflow process and cross training employees will eliminate these problems as just the same employees will be capable of handling different types of duties. To help in restructuring the entire process of processing claims, Cook has established a taskforce and also outsourced an external