Assignment 1 -

This assignment tests your knowledge and use of BPMN - the lecturer will ensure that any submission is your own work and may require individual presentation of the model. You must provide links to your signavio model when submitting the assignment. You should export the model as a "png" file and insert it in to MS Word.

Model the following using BPMN in Signavio

The Graduate School at UX offers three levels of graduate programs - doctoral, master's, and undergraduate. Students with a bachelor's degree or the equivalent from an accredited college or university may apply for admission to the Graduate School. Students may be admitted to the Graduate School if their previous academic record and background suggest reasonable likelihood for success in their proposed programs. Students are admitted by the Dean of the Graduate School only upon recommendation of the graduate program involved.

The Graduate school has two offices. One office is shared with the undergraduate admissions and is located in the Millennium Student Center (MSC). This is the central place where all the applications are received. Another office is the Dean's office, which is in located elsewhere. There are two full time employees in the admissions office who take care of all the application processing. Once processed at admissions office and reviewed by departments all applications go to Dean's office for a final review.

Following is a list of all the individuals/ departments/ offices/ technologies involved in the process and their role:

1. Applicant: The main customer of the process who applies for admission in any graduate program. He/She could be a new student, returning student or an internal student who has obtained his/her undergraduate degree from UMSL.

2. Graduate Admissions Office: Located in Millennium Student Center (MSC), this office is the central place where all the applications are received, processed, and forwarded to various departments for review.

3. Student Information System (SIS): This is the main database system used in the process. It contains applicant's personal and academic information. The information is loaded into the SIS automatically or manually.

4. Office of Registration: Located in the MSC, this office handles two important operations in the overall admissions process
- 1: Loads applicant's data into Student Information System (SIS) and 2: Receive GRE scores, read, and load them into SIS.

5. Departments: There are six main school/colleges to which students apply,

6. Dean's Office: Dean's office makes a final review of all applications. This office also handles administrative tasks of graduate school.

The basic process flow is Applicant sends his/her application and supporting documents to Admissions Office. Admissions Office sends application and transcript(s) to Registration to load into the SIS. Once the data is loaded into SIS Admissions Office makes file for department to review. File is sent to the department. Department makes initial decision whether to accept or reject applicant. A summary form is sent to Dean's office for a final review. Dean reviews application and sends summary form back to Admissions Office. The final decision is loaded into the SIS and Applicant is informed of the admission decision.

Graduate Admissions Process - Detailed Analysis

Graduate Admissions process is divided into four sub-processes as described below. Detailed process maps of all these processes are given in the Appendix.

1. Information Request by Applicants

2. Application Submission

3. Submission of Additional Material

4. Application Processing/Decision Making Information Request by Applicants
Students contact Admissions Office via phone, email, mail or walk-in to receive information and/or application packet. The College of Business, Nursing, and Department of Chemistry prefer students to contact them directly for any information. These queries are forwarded to departments.

All application material is available online. The website currently does not have ability to generate a complete packet of application based on department and program to which a student wishes to apply. Different parts of an application are available at different places to download on website. A complete information packet contains a cover letter, an application, a list of programs and material requirements, recommendation letters and specific program information.

The university is concerned about the process for international admissions. Application Submission

There are primarily two ways an internnational student can submit an application for admission - Paper or Electronic. The most common method is to send a paper application. The Applicant either downloads an application from the website or gets a paper copy from the Admissions Office. Applications are sent to Admissions Office by Mail, Courier or hand carried.

Once an application is received on time, Admissions Office makes a copy and sends the original to Registration for data entry into Student Information System (SIS).

There are two versions of online application. One application is for new students. This is People Soft based application. The other online application is for readmitted students. The main difference between two applications is the ability of People Soft application to load data directly into SIS. The other application does not load data directly into SIS. For this type of application Admissions Office checks the system every day for new applications. If there are new applications in the system Admissions Office makes two copies. One copy is sent to the Registration to load data into SIS. This application could be submitted without application fee whereas People Soft application requires application fees to be paid at the time of submission.

Nearly 80% applications are paper applications. Paper applications take more time to process. The information of paper application is sent to Registration to load into the SIS. There are also a number of late and in-complete applications. A large number of applications are received near the deadline, which makes application handling difficult and also causes delay in processing. Whether sending in an online or paper based application new students need to include:

Certified copies of previous degree and academic transcripts. Results of English language test.
Curriculum vitae.

When these documents are received by the admissions office, an officer checks the completeness of the documents. If any document is missing, an e-mail is sent to the student. The student has to then send the missing documents by post.

Assuming the application is complete, the admissions office sends the certified copies of the degrees to an academic recognition agency, which checks the degrees and gives an assessment of their validity and equivalence in terms of local education standards. This agency requires that all documents be sent to it by post, and all documents must be certified copies of the originals. The agency sends back its assessment to the university by post as well.

Assuming the degree verification is successful, the English language test results are then checked online by an officer at the admissions office. If the validity of the English language test results cannot be verified, the application is rejected (such notifications of rejection are sent by e-mail). Once all documents of a given student have been validated, the admission office forwards these documents by internal mail to the corresponding academic committee responsible for deciding whether to offer admission or not. The committee makes its decision based on the academic transcripts and the CV. The committee meets once every 2 to 3 weeks and examines all applications that are ready for academic assessment at the time of the meeting.. Different departments process their applications differently. Processing time and requirements vary from program to program. All departments make panels of faculty members to review applications. Some departments also interview applicants before making an admission decision. At the end of the committee meeting, the chair of the committee notifies the admissions office of the selection outcomes. This notification includes a list of admitted and rejected candidates.

A few days later, the admission office notifies the outcome to each candidate via e-mail. Additionally, successful candidates are sent a confirmation letter by post.

a) Complete a BPMN model for this process. Make sure to include swim lanes, sub processes, artifacts and annotations where appropriate. Present a single BPM model with sub processes shown on the main model

b) Calculate the cycle time and cycle time efficeincy described assuming that: The process starts when a paper based or online application is sent or submitted.

It takes on average 2 weeks for the documents to arrive to the admissions office by post.

The check for completeness of documents takes about 10 minutes. In 20 % of cases, the completeness check finds that some documents are missing. In this cases an e-mail is sent to the student automatically by the University admission management system based on the input provided by the international students officer during the completeness check.

A student services officer spends on average 10 minutes to put the degrees and transcripts in an envelope and send them to the academic recognition agency. The time it takes to send the degrees/transcripts to the academic recognition agency and to receive back a response is 2 weeks on average.

About 10 % of applications are rejected after the academic recognition assessment.

The university pays a fee of $ 15 each time it requests the academic recognition agency to accept an application.

The university charges $100 per application.

Checking the English language test results takes 1 day on average, but in reality the officer who performs the check only spends 10 minutes on average per check. This language test check free.

About 20 % of applications are rejected after the English language test.

It takes on average 2 weeks between the time students service sends the copy of an application to the committee members and the moment the committee makes a decision (accept or reject). On average, the committee spends 1 hour examining each application.

It takes on average 2 days (after the decision is made by the academic committee) for the students service to record the academic committee's decision in the University admission management system. Recording a decision takes on average 2 minutes. Once a decision is recorded, a notification is automatically sent to the student.

Present a simplified workflow model to demonstrate how the cycle time and efficiency were calculated

c) Suggest 4 incremental process improvement options - the university is not prepared to fund the cost of a radical new system.
Students must be prepared to explain their BPMN model and solutions.

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