Enhancing Collaborations by Assessing the Expected Financial Benefits of Improvement Projects

Abstract : In the highly competitive world of today, firms try to maximize value for their customers and other stakeholders through the effective management of their networks. That is why companies must adopt changes, generally at a network scale, that often involve high costs and potentially allow high benefits. This paper deals with an original method able to quantify the financial impacts of a planned improvement project. This proposition is instantiated in a three-step methodology: (i) modeling the AS-IS collaborative flows through a Value Stream Mapping (VSM) method and making decisions regarding the potential improvements; (ii) assessing the expected business consequences of the improvement plan through a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) approach; (iii) converting the business evaluation in a financial dimension through a Value Stream Costing (VSC) step. The originality of this research work consists in coupling VSM, DES and VSC techniques in a unique and integrated method able to support decision-making by forecasting financial consequences of any improvement plan, at a network scale. A real application case from the construction industry sector is developed at the end of the paper to illustrate the benefits of our proposition.