The Business Improvement Process has as its central objective, to maximize the efficiency and competitiveness of the Cuban state-owned company, on the basis of granting it the powers, and establishing the policies, principles and procedures that tend to the development of the initiative, creativity and the responsibility of all bosses and workers.
Companies in the process of improvement go through seven steps that can be grouped into four major stages.
The Diagnosis stage is of great importance for the projection of the perfected Company. It can be said that the initial business diagnosis is carried out with a predominantly functional and hierarchical approach, the combination of these traditional and process approaches being limited, hence the objective of this work is to demonstrate the importance of the Process Approach during the Diagnosis in companies in Business Improvement.
Introduction:
The current world economic situation is characterized by accelerated technological development, a globalized economy and a focus on the customer, where the customer is not in a position to receive passively, but rather to demand more and more.
For much of the 20th century, the rise and development of productive and service organizations was in an environment where the most important thing was to produce; the degree of specialization in functions reached its highest levels, almost all the research and development budget was dedicated to product design, very little was devoted to improving production processes.
In the last decade of the last century, the situation begins to change as top management begins to perceive that process design is as important as product design.
The current market is characterized by the concurrence of an increasing number of companies that provide the same product or provide the same service, a market dominated by consumers and in which companies have begun to sharpen their competition.
Because of this, they began to reformulate theories and employ focus, in order to allow organizations the change they needed in customer orientation.
Cuba is not oblivious to this situation, the Cuban state company is immense in a great effort to transform itself and substantially improve the results through the modification of behaviors and capacities. The culmination of these measures is the Business Improvement Process, the main objective of which is to maximize the efficiency and competitiveness of the Cuban state-owned company, on the basis of granting it the powers, and establishing the policies, principles and procedures that promote to the development of initiative, creativity and responsibility of all bosses and workers.
Companies in the process of improvement go through seven steps:
1- Preparation of all workers.
2- Initial business diagnosis
3- Analysis of the Diagnosis by the Government Group and authorization to begin the studies.
4- Study development and improvement projection. Improvement File.
5- Approval by the Government Group of the Improvement File and authorization of the beginning of the implementation.
6- Implementation of Business Improvement.
7- Supervision and adjustment of the designed system.
Which can be grouped into four main stages:
1- Awareness
2- Diagnosis
3- Projection
4- Monitoring and evaluation
The Diagnosis constitutes the second step of the process and constitutes an analytical examination of the past trajectory and the current situation of the company, as well as its potential prospects, regarding the fulfillment of its mission, its objectives, and activities; of the state of its resources, of the characterization of its culture and of its technical and organizational functioning, for which reason it is necessary to use different approaches to conduct it.
The initial business diagnosis is performed with a predominantly functional and hierarchical approach, without an adequate combination of these traditional and process approaches.
This may be conditioned when managers perceive the organization as a system made up of its different elements, which makes each of the subsystems analyzed in a functional and independent way, taking into account the particular area, that is, they see the fractional organization. by department, which focuses on the fulfillment of its tasks, which means that it is not possible to see the organization as a whole and as part of a larger external environment, it is not possible to perceive that the activity of any part of the organization affects all parts.
For the foregoing, the objective of this work is to demonstrate the importance of the Process Approach during the Diagnostic stage in companies in Business Improvement.
Development:
Regarding the concept of Process, different definitions have been established for the best understanding of this work, we have formulated the following:
Processes: A set of activities, duly organized, that receives one or more inputs and creates a product of value to solve a customer's need, this may be internal or external to the organization. In every process there is an input associated with a supplier, a producer in charge of transforming said input into an output or product, which may be a good or a service, that is, value is added to the inputs and the customer would receive this product.
When studying the Bases of the Improvement Process, the need to make the analysis in the organization under study with a comprehensive approach is revealed, they make explicit, visible and tells companies what? It is now about companies working on the how ?, which depends on many factors such as: the level of development the company starts from, the goals it aspires to, the ability of its leaders to manage the process integrally, the organization's capacity for change, its vision of the future.
In this material we stop at the Diagnostic stage due to the importance that this has for the projection of the perfected Company, because in this it must:
- Detect the problems that are faced in detail. Know to what degree the current situations are in correspondence with the new requirements. Uncover the factors and forces causing the problems. Evaluate, the potential capacity to introduce modifications and the existing reserves to solve the problems. Understand the causes of process behavior
- Determine which are the cardinal problems of the company that determine its survival, development and competitiveness, the process approach internationally is complex and difficult to apply to study companies, since it constitutes a change in the way of thinking of the company, for which makes it necessary to use different approaches, each of which has its advantages and disadvantages, trying to identify possibilities for improvement, so that each one plays its role. These approaches include:
- Hierarchical approach,
This approach is very simple (it only follows the organization chart), it has as its principle the unity of command, it has the disadvantages that the link between the activities is not shown and it focuses on the tasks and not on the results.
- Functional approach
It is independent of the fragmentation of the hierarchical structure, the analyzes are more structured, it is suitable for managing the specific resources of specialties and integrates the processes from the point of view of a specialty.
Among the main disadvantages of this approach are: it does not focus on the final results, it does not show the links between the activities and it prioritizes the optimum of the activities over customer satisfaction.
- Process approach
The process approach in the study of organizations provides significant advantages since it includes clients, suppliers and work flow, in addition, it allows us to see “how” the work is carried out through processes that transcend functional barriers, since they form the ways by which, truly, the products or services are made, allowing to identify the practices that must be modified to increase the efficiency, effectiveness and effectiveness of the process.
Among the main disadvantages of the process approach are:
- It is more complex than previous approaches. It does not guarantee integration by specialty. Authority is made less explicit.
It is necessary that in the Diagnostic stage, in addition to the Functional and Hierarchical approaches, the Process approach is used, because if at this stage the Process approach is not used efficiently, it will result in little diagnostic capacity, which causes loss of capacity for change in the environment.
In addition, the analysis at the level of the processes allows, fundamentally, to determine possible separations or fractionation in the processes and therefore to improve the relationships between the functional areas, persuading them to achieve the organizational goals.
With the Process approach, customers and suppliers are included in the analysis, in addition, the inter-functional relationships are directed entirely according to the client, that is, it is possible to make the process a true process and the system a true system depending on the client.
For all of the above, the importance of using the Process Approach, in addition to traditional approaches, in the Diagnostic stage is revealed. Being evident that with the process focus within the framework of the Business Improvement Process it constitutes a way to get closer to customers and to obtain better results in organizational performance.
Conclusions:
Once this work has been carried out, we can reach the following conclusions:
- Due to the importance that the Diagnostic stage has within the Business Improvement process, for the proper development of the following stages, the application of the approach in process at this stage will be decisive.
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