From the course: Supply Chain Foundations: Project Management

Exercise: Analyzing supply chain processes using SIPOC

From the course: Supply Chain Foundations: Project Management

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Exercise: Analyzing supply chain processes using SIPOC

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- SIPOC is an acronym for five elements that are found in every process, suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers. Let's practice a SIPOC analysis by examining a process that's critical to the company we're using as a case study, Two Trees Olive Oil. I've included a blank SIPOC template for you in the course exercise files or you can create your own on a blank sheet of paper. Our process is making olive oil. Pause right now and think about the suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers for the process of making olive oil. When you're done, come back and you can compare your SIPOC to the one that I'm building. (upbeat music) I'd love to see what you came up with for your SIPOC. Here are some of the things that came to mind for me. Our suppliers include olive orchards that provide us with the olives and equipment suppliers that provide us with the tools and the machinery that we need. Our inputs include olives and manufacturing equipment, as well as employees who know how to use that equipment. Our manufacturing process transforms the olives into olive oil, one step at a time. Next, our primary output from the process is, of course, our finished product, olive oil. But we might also need to think about some of the other outputs like the waste and emissions that we generated. Finally, our customers are the wholesalers, retailers and end consumers who buy our olive oil. Your SIPOC might be a bit different from mine, but I bet there were a lot of similarities too, and you can see how useful a SIPOC can be for quickly analyzing the key elements of a process. Now that you know how to build a SIPOC, you can use this powerful tool to analyze any supply chain process.

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