Actual cases

adjusting activities to client intention. There are common principles both in agile software development (Takeuchi, 1986) and consulting practice.

Several team meetings are held before visiting the cooperation company. 6 to 8 hour team meeting is held on Saturday. 3 hour meeting is held once a week in weekday evening. Each student is assigned homework to the next meeting. It takes about 3 hours to complete the homework. The subject of homework is decided by the supervisor (the author) or the project manager.

Since the project is to conduct consultation, team discussion is encouraged to reach better ideas. Outcome of the homework becomes a start line of the discussion. Subject of the discussion is given by the supervisor. The supervisor reviews the contents after team discussion of a couple of hours. Quality of discussion contents is critical in consultation. If the supervisor does not satisfied with the contents, he gives students hints to think. The team discussion is repeated. Time of discussion is not so important from educational point of view, rather contents of discussion are important. The supervisor must be patient to wait.

If some ideas come from the discussion, the supervisor let students to present them to the management of the company. The management makes judgment whether they are acceptable of not. Students learn the required quality level to get accepted from the response. The supervisor lets students to learn for themselves. The supervisor controls the quality so that the management may not feel waste of time.

Students always prepare charts for the meeting with the management to communicate their messages adequately. Skills to draw charts are well trained as well. Though chart creation is divided to each student, message creation is cooperative activity.

2.4. Evaluation of students

Evaluation of students in PBL is always difficult. Students mainly learn by doing activities in the project. Activities assigned to a student vary depending on a situation of the project. A teacher cannot control well the assignment. What a student learns may be different from what a teacher wants the student to learn.

In this particular PBL we evaluate a student from two aspects, one is the extent of any contribution to the project and the other is the extent of ideas which bring value to the cooperation company. Some students are not good at putting forward an idea.

Even if the extent of idea is short, the extent of contribution as a whole is evaluated. The supervisor is watching students’

activities so that he can evaluate appropriately. As two other sub-supervisors evaluate students as well so that the evaluation of the supervisor might not get out of common standard.

Teacher as a supervisor let the students discuss the business of the company several hours at first. But their discussion didn’t approach the right direction. He raised several questions so that students could realize the right direction. Some components of Figure 3 came from the answers of the questions. After all components are put up to Figure 3.

3.1.3. Ideal state of business and Points to change

Figure 4 shows the ideal state of business (To-Be) in step 3 and three points to change in step 4. We have discussed a lot with the president. He thinks that the basic of company strength comes from employee. If each employee exhibits his potential well, the company becomes stronger. Every employee has thinking capability. If good input for think is supplied, employees can think for themselves to improve something.

Information should be provided as company asset. Good and faster communication among employees in different divisions is important. Motivation of employees must be kept high. Though each of these sound trivial, it is important for the president to realize and confirm these.

The president accepted and appreciated Figure 4 when presented. The president took some actions after our final presentation to the cooperation company. This was the sign that our activity brought value to the company.

A value to the company varies from company to company. There are many things said what should be done in general. But identification and prioritization to do is important. This comes from understanding of business and discussion with management.

Indeed Figure 4 seems trivial for some, but it has value for the particular company.

This kind of experience is important to learn. We believe that we succeeded PBL education in this sense in this case.

3.2. Home health care massage company

Figure 3 Business of metal plating company

Figure 4 Three points to change with To-Be stage of the company

3.2.1. Background

The company was introduced by the president of metal plating company. In Japan home health care massage became a subject of health insurance about 15 years ago. The president established the company and entered the new service market of home health care massage since then. The company has grown rapidly. There are about 60 stations nationwide now. The number of staffs is about 500.

The president has several concerns about the growth of the company. For example, he has confidence to grow from 1 to 10.

But he does not have good confidence to grow from 10 to 100. Once the company becomes bigger, the operation must be changed from that of small size.

The president told us his vision, business strategy, what he has done, and his concerns. Our team tried to respond the concerns that were expressed at the meeting. We investigated several books, web, and materials. We reported what we investigated with our comments. These activities were well accepted. As activities were many, we divided the work into two smaller groups (two to three students).

3.2.2. Structure of concerns

We used strategic capability network as a tool to figure out capabilities which support business strategy. This activity led the CSFs (critical success factors). CSFs were part of our recommendations. Figure 5 illustrates the relationship among vision, business strategy, business model, and CSFs. CSFs are written in white circles in lower half. There are many similar concepts, such as, vision, business strategy, business model, and company ideology. The president talked us about these. Each of them is important. But it was a little bit difficult for us to understand as a whole. This impression triggered to draw Figure 5 for arrangement of thought. The president has thought about these a lot. In a discussion at the meeting, the president got stimulated from us. He got new insight from our report and discussion. The discussion eventually brought values to the president. Figure 5 is one of the summaries of our activities. Students acquired very good experience. They learned what the management responds when satisfied.

3.3. Sales division of life insurance 3.3.1. Background

The goal is obvious to increase sales of life insurance by life consultants. Their basic business model was established more than 100 years ago. A life consultant asks a new client to introduce prospects. A list of prospect is an essential asset for the life consultant.

A manager of sales division of a life insurance company thought that there could be another business model, since IT has been advanced and IT has impacted society so much. He provided us the case.

3.3.2. Difficulty of logic creation

Figure 5 Structure of president concerns and our recommendations

We have more than dozen of meetings with the manager. Each meeting was about 2 hours. Student team often failed to deliver good values to the manager. Since he was not satisfied the contents of presentation, he gave us many suggestions.

Teacher did not give students clear advice to overcome the situation. Teacher thought that students should realize the cause of difficulty. Eventually the planed final presentation has been postponed, because quality of contents was not good.

Students had already enough elements of contents for presentation. They lack the key logic for persuasion. Figure 6 is the chart which is added after postpone of final presentation. Students had implicitly noticed that same interest or same concern were key. But they have never explicitly expressed it. There is common recognition that attractiveness of life consultant results in the success of sales. Adding Figure 6 with the story for success of sales, students completed the final presentation. Most of charts were the same at the time of postpone. Contents were not changed. Logic was explicitly added and clarified.

At the final presentation the director of sales division gave us very good comments. After all final presentation was successful. Students have experienced that a little difference turned out the success.

3.4. Cosmetic dermatology clinic 3.4.1. Background

The company was introduced by the president of home health care massage company. The employees of clinic are 7 other than the doctor and the president (wife of the doctor). When the clinic opened in 2000, cosmetic dermatology clinic was very new in Japan. There were so many customers that they had to wait 3 to 4 month to get treated. Since then business environment has changed. Many competitors appear. Behavior of customers changes. The president asked us any improvement of their business.

The president expressed issues from her perspective. The clinic does not provide functions to make a reservation through web home page. How can the clinic achieve the best balance between resource capacity and customer needs? In summer some customers have to wait 2 to 3 months, while in winter resources sometimes become idle. These are very natural observations. We tried to approach the root cause of issues.

We analyzed their business and their business processes. During the meeting with the company the president has noticed the problems which can be easily solved. Some actions were quickly taken which were triggered by our activities. Students were glad to get direct response.

3.4.2. Change the way of booking

One of root issues we identified is booking (make a reservation). It is natural that booking time is the time a customer requests. But it does not fit to the case of this clinic. We simulated how the requests conflict if we accept customer request time.

The result was about 50%. This number matches the feeling of receptionist. Since this number is big, there could be potential customers who give up to get treated by this clinic. The smaller conflict occurs, the better. This issue was not well recognized until we pointed out.

Analyzing reservation records, we found that 3 slot reservation holds more than two third. In order to reduce conflicts, reservation should be arranged so that 3 contiguous slots may be left. This led the change of thought that the booking time is not the customer request time but the recommended time by the clinic. The recommendation can be controlled easily by guide boarders.

Figure 6 New business model to get prospects for life consultants

Figure 7 shows this change as one of points to change. As objective of the project is to change the way of work, new way of booking fit to this. If IT support is available, there are additional services become available. Figure 7 shows these potential services, one of which is web reservation.

3.4.3. Crucial influences of PBL activities The president of the clinic said;

“I had never thought that the clinic (operations of the clinic) could change. Now I find even the clinic can change.”

One of the students said;

“I am able to feel happiness when I see that the client becomes happy through our consultation and when the client says

‘thank you.’”