Process Mapping Examples - Uber and Cellana

Manufacturing and Service Process Maps

Len S. Smith

Grand Canyon University:  MGT-655 (Operations Management; Professor T. Peete)

July 5, 2016

Introduction

This paper examines the differences in companies in manufacturing and service business models.  To explore the topic, a representative manufacturing company and service company were selected and researched.  Mapping for the manufacturing and service process of these companies are provided below.

The manufacturing company I selected for this paper is the microalgae production company Cellana, LLC (company website: http://cellana.com).  Cellana describes itself as a “leading developer of algae-based bioproducts” including DHA oils, animal feed, and biofuel materials (Cellana, 2016).  For this paper, I focused specifically on Cellana’s biofuel production process.  Cellana’s microalgae production system couples photobioreactors with open pond algae growth systems (Cellana, 2016).  Cellana is manufacturing microalgae biofuel as part of a commercial partnership with Neste Oil (Cellana, 2016).  

The service company I chose to examine for this paper is the well-known transportation facilitation (“ride sharing”) company, Uber Technologies Inc. (company website:  www.uber.com).  According to Juggernaut (2015), Uber is “an on-demand transportation service which has brought a revolution in the taxi industry all across the world.” The business model of Uber “has made it possible for people to simply tap their smartphone and have a cab arrive at their location in the minimum possible time.”  Uber has been remarkably successful, achieving a valuation of more than 50 billion dollars in just seven years of operation (Juggernaut, 2015).  Uber does not produce any products; Uber’s business is in the service of connecting drivers and riders.  

Product Manufacturing Process Map:  Cellana

Cellana’s biofuel production process is depicted below.  Cellana’s process is unique in that it combines the use of photobioreactors (PBRs) and open ponds in producing microalgae

[pic 1]

(Cellana, LLC, 2016).  Cellana’s PBRs are made from flexible tubing (Beal, 2015).  These systems provide contamination-free material as inoculum for the significantly larger ponds (Cellana, LLC, 2016; Beal, 2015).  The basic inputs to the PBR growth system are water, sunlight, microalgae, and carbon dioxide (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013; Cella, LLC, 2016).  The Cellana PBR process takes approximately one week (Beal, 2015).  The “ponds” are large, shallow pools of paddlewheel-driven recirculating water that resemble “raceways” (Huntley, 2015; Cellana, LLC, 2016)).  Growth in Cellana’s “ponds”, which can be in one or two stages, typically lasts three days (Huntley, 2015).  The purpose of the pond stage is to deprive the microalgae of nutrients and to stress the algae to cause the algae to synthesize oils that will be used for biofuel production (Cellana, LLC, 2016).