Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung

Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung Case

Background

DAV was founded in 1966 and by 1996 it had become one of the worlds largest insurance companies writing nearly 48 billion DM in premiums in over 32 countries. The majority of their business, 51% was in Germany and 60% of their business was in retail insurance, dealing with disability income protection, health, property, and life insurance. In Germany, DAV is one of the giants of industry. They are trying to maintain that position despite smaller insurance companies attempting to attack their primary markets. DAV has much success due to their sound, traditional insurance management and outstanding customer service. Annette Kluck who is head of operations wants to improve the overall efficiency of the company by using statistical process control (SPC).

Problems

• Same day processing which increased overtime and decreased employee morale

• Errors in processing of information by both employee and customers. 12% of forms filed were no in good order. These errors made customers intolerant and extra work hours for employees to fix such errors.

• Competition within the industry especially regarding smaller companies

• Inefficiency with double-key entry that was expensive to hire a second person, was time consuming and frustrating. This method also made the first pass worse over time.

Issues with SPC after the roll-out

• Issues with teams that have better accuracy had to keep increasing their sample size in order to find errors. This process became burdensome to the best teams.

• Unclear guidelines about what is a mistake on forms and what is the important information that should be focused on and the irrelevant information that should not be worried about.

• Lawyers were not going to be influenced by SPC, only made them frustrated since their job was to resolve customers’