Introduction
Nguyen family is a middle-income family that lives in Southeast Houston. The family consists of 8 members; therefore, many types of entertainment are used in the home, including Netflix, games, movies, and cable television. Through this project, the family hopes to reach their goal of overcoming economic hardship and save money for the purchase of a new home big enough to accommodate the entire family. There is not much use for these extra entertainment amenities because the users are mainly children and students. These modes of entertainments provide little educational benefits, therefore, discontinuing these services will significantly reduce the Nguyen family’s monthly expenses.
Methodology and Results
The SIPOC diagram assists us to comprehend the process of using various types of entertainment services by our family members. It gives us a better understanding of the process components, including suppliers/customers, inputs/outputs, and processes. The flowchart helps us study the specific process steps that lead to the entertainment services option. The data outlined in the SIPOC diagram, has been obtained through observing our family routine and interviewing family members.
The SIPOC diagram introduced in Appendix A demonstrates the usage of entertainment services involves a number of constituent parts. Therefore, it provides a more complicated scenario for the investigation than we primarily conclude. The flowchart in Appendix B shows more significant details of the decision-making process, which makes the family members, prefer entertainment services at home or in the city to outdoor activities. In order to reduce expenses and have the opportunity to preserve assets for a bigger house, we need to eliminate or add some steps in the process.
Under the conducted investigation, we can safely assert that there is a means to eliminate entertainment services and substitute them with something less expensive and equally exciting. Our choice rested on indoor intellectual activities, which could be, but are not restricted to the board games of various themes such as management, environment, history, foreign languages, etc. Concentrating on outdoor and intellectual indoor activities will assist us in limiting the entertainment services usage significantly. Working with the process steps accordingly, we will not only succeed in controlling excessive expenditures, but also widen the overall outlook and scope of interests of the family members.
The data collected for this study has provided us with the instrument of how to achieve the target, i.e. reduce monthly entertainment services expenses. However, if we were to conduct this research once more, we could attempt to approach the process in terms of family convenience, rather than target achievement. With a different mindset to approach the process, we would tolerate the usage of services as an occasional stand-by option for the family members. Thus, we could suggest a more time-consuming but less stressful tool for process improvement and reaching the goal.
Appendix A – SIPOC Diagram
Suppliers Inputs Process Outputs Customers
1. Family members
2. Service providers (Netflix, Cable TV, AMC Theater, etc.) Entertainment services 1. Boring
2. Burn time
3. Order services
4. Installation
5. Using services Relax
Reduce stress
Entertain parties
Monthly bills Family members
Appendix B – Flowchart
