Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung
For exclusive use Lahore University of Management Sciences, 2015
Harvard Business School
9-696-084
Rev. April 15, 1997
Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung
Annette Kluck parked her chin on the heel of her hand as she watched her electronic fishbowl, late on a Friday afternoon in January 1996. Frank Schoeck, the head of operations at DAV
Kundendienstgruppe1 (DAKG), had just made a surprise visit. “So,” he had said, in his famously blunt style, “when do you think we’ll start seeing some visible results from all this operations improvement work you’ve got everyone doing?” Kluck was a little chagrined. She was convinced that the performance of the DAKG customer service operation had improved, but that the evidence might take a little time to appear.
Kluck, the architect behind Prozessmessung und Verbesserung2 (PMV), was head of
Operations Development at Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung (DAV), one of the largest insurance companies in Europe. The PMV project was a revolutionary effort to use manufacturing-style improvement techniques in insurance services. It had begun six months earlier as part of a broad initiativeto improve information accuracy and quality throughout DAV. The project had, as its name suggested, been broken into two phases. In the first phase, methods were developed for measuring the quality of a number of process steps at DAV (such as the process for transcribing information from a customer application form onto the computer). In the second phase, these new measurement methods would be used as the basis for performance improvement. DAV had now completed the measurement phase, and was tracking the performance measures over time. It was now time to begin improving the performance of the various processes.
Kluck, however, was facing a number of difficult problems with the improvement phase of the project.
Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung
Founded in 1966 by Andreas Steininger, Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung was one of the world’s largest insurance companies,
Harvard Business School
9-696-084
Rev. April 15, 1997
Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung
Annette Kluck parked her chin on the heel of her hand as she watched her electronic fishbowl, late on a Friday afternoon in January 1996. Frank Schoeck, the head of operations at DAV
Kundendienstgruppe1 (DAKG), had just made a surprise visit. “So,” he had said, in his famously blunt style, “when do you think we’ll start seeing some visible results from all this operations improvement work you’ve got everyone doing?” Kluck was a little chagrined. She was convinced that the performance of the DAKG customer service operation had improved, but that the evidence might take a little time to appear.
Kluck, the architect behind Prozessmessung und Verbesserung2 (PMV), was head of
Operations Development at Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung (DAV), one of the largest insurance companies in Europe. The PMV project was a revolutionary effort to use manufacturing-style improvement techniques in insurance services. It had begun six months earlier as part of a broad initiativeto improve information accuracy and quality throughout DAV. The project had, as its name suggested, been broken into two phases. In the first phase, methods were developed for measuring the quality of a number of process steps at DAV (such as the process for transcribing information from a customer application form onto the computer). In the second phase, these new measurement methods would be used as the basis for performance improvement. DAV had now completed the measurement phase, and was tracking the performance measures over time. It was now time to begin improving the performance of the various processes.
Kluck, however, was facing a number of difficult problems with the improvement phase of the project.
Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung
Founded in 1966 by Andreas Steininger, Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung was one of the world’s largest insurance companies,