Continuous and iterative improvement is a journey for every business. As leaders, we know we need to improve our quality, and do things faster and in the most cost-efficient manner and that is just the tip of the iceberg. How do we begin to tackle and prioritize?
Randstad Digital focuses on helping clients accelerate digital enablement to deliver the best outcomes for their businesses and customers. This means working with clients to embrace change to create a competitive advantage. Organizations are led by iteratively evolving capabilities and culture to reimagine business and reinforce resiliency in the face of constant change. So, let’s break that down to the 6 Guiding Principles for Process Optimization.
While both the maturity of the organization and the environmental situation may drive some principles to be addressed before others, there is one principle that always has to be addressed first—Rapidly Assess, Prioritize, and Develop Processes. I.e., you need to ensure you have a solid understanding of your business processes and any gaps that may be constraining performance.
Establishing the current state of an organization, business unit, product, etc., is an essential first step. Previously, when Lean concepts originated in manufacturing environments, one of the best ways to understand the current state, understand how something currently functions or performs, was to walk the process and observe (and document) how it is executed (i.e., a Gemba walk). However, businesses have evolved and the majority of our clients operate in exclusively digital/virtual environments or products, or transactional environments, so there is often no physical process to walk through; however, the concept still works. To do a virtual Gemba walk, you may need to watch a loan application being processed on a PC, navigate through a web portal, interview a tech designer to understand the process, or come up with some other creative way to “walk” the process. Observing, describing, and understanding the process allows for a firm understanding of the current state and becomes the standard by which all improvement can be measured and change can be charted.
process map
If you need to understand sequence, logic, and order, then a map is a simple, intuitive, and quick tool. If you also need to understand roles and responsibilities, then add swim lanes (e.g., sections associated with a functional role).
sipoc
If you need to understand sequence, logic, and If you need to understand inputs and outputs, performers, stakeholders, systems used, information/data conveyed, then a SIPOC (Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer) is a great tool. One of the single best tools to start an assessment with in my opinion, because it allows you to do a high-level investigation to get fundamental process details, without getting too far into the weeds and getting bogged down at the start.
risk assessment
If you need to understand failure points throughout your process, to quantify the relative severity of these failures, and understand what controls are available/applicable, then an FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) style risk assessment is concise and well structured.
So, we have a solid foundation. What’s next? If the scope of the problem is large and complex, involving multiple processes, then we will need a framework that provides context for the interdependencies and interconnectedness of processes. In these instances, it is necessary to develop a process hierarchy. We will cover process hierarchies in the next blog chapter.
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