Thoughts about Process Improvement—a practitioner’s perspective

Continuous Process Improvement--the intent of any CPI effort is to reduce cost, increase quality and reliability, and reduce cycle time. CPI is a philosophy of continuous improvement with a set of concepts and techniques geared to better meet the needs of customers through elimination of waste that negatively impacts process flows and the value added component of any product or service. Two very effective tools in the CPI toolbox are Lean and Six Sigma.

Lean’s main focus is on the removal of waste, which is defined as anything not necessary (not value added) to produce the product or service. Lean is a process improvement strategy that facilitates an organization’s ability to make everything, every day in the exact quantity required, with no defects. The goal is to achieve perfection through the total elimination of waste in the value stream. Lean uses incremental improvement to constantly expose waste to balance operational and standard workflows beginning with the initial product design.

Six Sigma (6σ) concepts and tools are based on the assumption that the outcome of the entire process will be improved by reducing the variation of multiple elements. It is a process improvement strategy that uses quality improvement as the method for business improvement. Six Sigma is uniquely driven by a close understanding of customer needs, disciplined use of facts, data, statistical analysis, and diligent attention to managing, improving, and reinventing business processes. Some thoughts for improving your process:

Adopt a customer perspective—managers typically adopt an internal programmatic perspective when defining improvement goals i.e., the program leadership perceives performance gaps then the improvement goal is made from that internal perspective. This may be fine but managers run the risk of falling far short of what our customers or stakeholders might want. Define measureable improvement objective from customer defined success attributes.

Adopt a holistic or enterprise view when designing a process—Federal agency processes, typically are performed based upon rules of thumb and from expert owner perspective rather than designed with the enterprise perspective. Processes tend created 20 or 30 years ago are reactive in that they PUSH a transaction through the entire process sequentially each time a customer request is made (for example, hiring action, retirement claim, request for a benefit, or investigation). Such processes are rife with backlog and require inordinate capacity to satisfy demand.  A well designed process is where a signal from the customer PULLS a product through a set of steps only when needed and matches the demand. For example even if we optimize the security clearance process and reduce the cycle time to a matter of hours or days, it would not necessarily put a new hire in the seat because the overall hiring and clearance process takes months. Design the process so units of output can be produced every day.

Service process improvement should focus on diagnosing causes of poor quality—quality problems or potential failure points occur at the interface points or boundaries between functions (see yellow circles in process chart). For the key process boundaries or interfaces, determine the process requirements by in terms of objectives, Customer Success Attributes (CSA), standards, and potential performance measures.  Then focus effort on error proofing the interface points and thereby accelerate process throughput.

Develop measures and use data to inform process—Measure to understand the nature of the process; and measure such things as throughput, process capability, productivity ratios, lead time (customer wait) and cycle time; and proportion customer value added (CVA) versus business value added (BVA) and non-value added (NVA) process components.  With such systemic measures, executives could hold real strategy review sessions and keep the organization focused on specific transformations as defined in measureable objective statements.  Having profound knowledge through measuring the important few things, managers then focus improvement effort on maximizing customer value added, optimizing business value added, and eliminating non-value added components of work.

Your goal should be to continuously improve your processes. Practice these key principles:

• Define measureable improvement objective from customer defined success attributes.
• Design the process so units of output can be produced every day.
• Focus effort on error proofing the interface points and thereby accelerate process throughput.
• Focus improvement effort on maximizing customer value added, optimizing business value added, and eliminating non-value added components of work.

1. Process Management: Methods for Improving Products and Services, Eugene H. Melan, ASQC Quality Press 1992 (pages 13-25, 98-108)
2. Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organizational Chart, Geary A. Rummler and Alan P. Brache, Jossey-Bass, 1995 (pages 5-14, 126-133)
3. Lean Six Sigma for Service: How to Use Lean Speed & Six Sigma Quality to Improve Services and Transactions, Michael L. George, McGraw-Hill, 2003 (pages 12-13, 26-42, 117-121, 187-196
4. Statistical Methods for Quality Improvement, Hotoshi Kume, The Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship, 1992
5. Guide to Quality Control, Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, Asian Productivity Organization, 1992