Title: A picture is worth a thousand labor hours: pinpointing efficiency opportunities in the processing of data from large-scale, complex surveys.

Abstract:

In the age of increased automation and the availability of tools that help make our processes more efficient, teams must work to identify opportunities that save time and cost on projects in order to remain competitive. Often times, processing of data from after its collection to the publication of estimates in tables and reports is very complex, with multiple teams, tasks, and interdependencies. It becomes a difficult charge to disentangle the web and pinpoint where best to expend resources that would ultimately speed up the time it takes to publish survey results for public consumption. During my presentation, I will briefly review the steps of the solution our team implemented to tackle such a problem. I will describe how our team used Smartsheet coupled with SAS’s ability to mass-produce Gantt charts in order to map our process, and how we were able to use the resulting visualizations to identify “opportunity areas” on our project. An example of the visualizations produced by the process will be presented with discussion of actionable insights gained from this exercise.