PROCESSES

 

Michael Hammer, in his book REENGINEERING THE CORPORATION, wrote “Reengineering is the radical redesign of business processes for dramatic improvement.” In his next book, BEYOND REENGINEERING: How the Process Centered Organization is Changing Our Work and Our lives, he said, “Originally I felt that the most important word in the definition was ‘radical’ -- I now come to realize that I was wrong, that the radical character of reengineering, however important and exciting, is not its most significant aspect. The key word in the definition of reengineering is ‘process’: a complete end-to-end set of activities that together create value for a customer.”

 

Processes are important because they are the way work gets done. Processes are a grouping in sequence of all inter-related tasks directed at producing one particular outcome. They usually involve several people working together, using materials from an internal or external supplier, manipulation of these supplies, and providing something to an internal or external customer. It is a really pretty simple concept. The problems arise when the processes are unpredictable, they need to be changed, or they are inefficient.

 

Recently, I have been working on processes with several organizations. One of them is a rapidly growing organization that needs to have its processes defined so it can teach new employees more efficiently. They are also migrating to a new computer system. They realized that until they understand in detail what they presently do they can’t properly install the new computer system. Another organization is using process mastering as a way to communicate with computer programmers what it is that the present process does and what they want the new computer program to do. A third organization is simply working where they have a mess -- where there are customer complaints.

 

So how do you go about working on processes? Perhaps the first step is to define the borders of the process. This may sound trivial, but it generally is not. One thing that helps is to give the process a name, e.g., payroll, accounts payable, shelving the returned books, invoicing the customer, making a bid, making a sales call. It is generally a good idea to size the process so that it has fewer than 50 tasks or activities. Generally people underestimate the number of steps in a process. So a rule of thumb is to think smaller rather than larger.

 

The heart of any process analysis is the flowchart. There are several acceptable approaches to flowcharting processes. The best advice is to keep the approach as simple as possible. It is best if the people who normally do the process are the ones who do the flowchart. After all, they know better than anyone else what goes on. One decision that will be needed as the flowcharting begins is, “to what level of detail should we go?” The flow chart can be fairly high level -- simply stating the general steps that take place. Or the flow chart can get rather detail -- getting down to the level of work instructions. The purpose of the process analysis should dictate the level.

 

As the flowcharting proceeds, it is good to ask questions like, “Who are the customers for this process and what do they want? And who is the supplier of the process and what do we need?” Another good question to explore is, “Are there any exceptions to what we just described?”

 

Finally, I always insist that the team working on defining the process choose a measurement that can monitor how well the process is working. This is not always easy, but it is very important.

 

From a logistics standpoint, I recommend using sticky notes to facilitate doing the flow chart. And I recommend that the flowchart be computerized in some way so that it can be retained, communicated and updated easily as the process is improved.

 

Working on processes is very important work. Michael Hammer says, “The truth is that even superior people cannot compensate for the deficiencies of inferior processes. A company that bases its success on personal performance, even a small company, is digging its own grave.”