Process management

The high development of the industrial world has reached saturation levels for some products, which added to the liberalization of international trade, leads us to ensure that only the best can survive in contracted and highly competitive (competitive) markets. Power has shifted from supply to demand, making the increasingly demanding customer the raison d'être of any business. Within this framework, PROCESS MANAGEMENT gives a total focus to the external client, displaying within the company its needs (minimum standard) and its expectations (subjective), being the fulfillment of the latter those that generate added value to the product or service.

Quality, objectively, does not exist. It is a concept that always contains a subjectivity. Someone has to set the comparison patterns that define the characteristics that a product must have to consider it of quality.

Quality within a business environment oriented to the product or production processes has been understood as: aptitude for use or compliance with standards and specifications.

ISO consists of a certification that the company is prepared to become certified and work, to have the quality (characteristics) expected of a certain product or service (Stable conformity to specifications).

It is indisputable that the certificate offers many advantages:

• Demonstration of capacity. Competitive advantage compared to non-certified.

• Reduction in the number of requirements, inspections, audits, etc., in order to obtain approval for a client.

• Free transit of products and services in local and international markets.

Quality in Management, NOT Quality Management. What is really important is not focused on having or not having a quality certification. Quality certificates would be of little value as a differential factor compared to competitors if the client is more demanding than the norms or if the entire sector has quality certification. In reality what it is about is to achieve impeccable management, Total Quality in management.

When it comes to total quality, traditional homologation methods are not enough. It is necessary to ensure not only certain characteristics of the product or the manufacturer. It is about certifying that the company is in a position to really offer, and to continue offering in the future, the products in question with the characteristics specified, with the delivery compliance that is promised, with the attention that the client expects, etc.., that is, Total Quality.

The concept of quality ceases to be limited to the characteristics of a product and begins to cover the entire Company - Customer relationship. It focuses more on the presence of value than on the absence of defects, certainly assumed by the customer

The concept of quality extends to everything that is done in the company, or has to be done, to better satisfy customers. It is then worth talking about quality in a triple context:

1. Product quality as one of its attributes

2. Quality of service, customer service insofar as it contributes to satisfying customer expectations by increasing the perceived added value.

3. Management quality that influences customer perception through staff performance; It manifests itself in the adoption of strategies, policy development and design of procedures aimed at customer satisfaction and in the consistent management of resources and people.

By the way, in PROCESS MANAGEMENT the most correct meaning for the concept of quality is: what the client expects to receive for what he is willing to pay based on the perceived value. From this point of view, quality is equivalent to "customer orientation of the company"; reason why PROCESS MANAGEMENT is presented as a quality management system aimed at total quality.

The technicality and a false sense of individual specialization, together with the internal competition and the feudal hierarchy of many companies, have led their members to be oriented to their personal task. Everyone is proud of their work from a technical point of view, and the rest does not matter.

Traditional management has been oriented to the effect, profit, forgetting its main immediate cause: Having satisfied and loyal customers. Each person concentrates her effort on the task assigned, trying to do it according to the instructions and specifications received, but with little information regarding the final result of her work. Even in manufacturing processes it is not surprising that a producer does not know, at least clearly, how his work contributes to the final product. In administrative and management jobs this is even more frequent.

This pyramid structure, very valid in companies where decisions are always made by the big boss, begins to have difficulties when Total Quality is required in each operation, in each transaction, in each process; it forces that great boss to multiply, especially in supervision.

The origin of traditional structures is based on the fragmentation of natural processes, product of the division of labor (Taylor), and subsequent grouping of the resulting specialized tasks in functional areas or departments. In these traditional structures; no area director is solely responsible for the successful completion of a process, since the responsibility is divided by areas and several areas intervene in the same transaction. Thus it would be up to the GENERAL MANAGEMENT to take responsibility for it. If we summarize, in traditional management the GENERAL MANAGEMENT has to intervene very frequently in complete processes, since in the same process many departments or areas intervene with different managers whose only coordination can be achieved by senior management. Also in this type of organizations,Adaptation to customer requirements is usually slower and more expensive, which has a direct impact on competitiveness.

Pyramid organizations were responding well to a strongly growing and predictable demand environment that is long gone. Real power is shifting from supply to demand and the client, each of them, has become the sole guide to all business actions. This fact, together with the difficulties of anticipating the future evolution of the competitive environment, requires profound changes in the Company: in its management techniques and in people.

It is about reuniting the activities around the processes that were previously fragmented as a consequence of a series of deliberate decisions and informal evolution, which means recognizing that the processes are first and then the organization that supports them to make them operational. It is to see the process as the natural way of organizing work. The structure may or may not coincide with the process, since in the same workplace, it can perform functions for different processes.

Company, in a customer-oriented environment, is defined as:

Organization that applies capabilities or resources to meet certain needs of its customers.

The company is a system of systems, each process is a system of functions and the functions or activities have been grouped by department or functional areas. MANAGEMENT BY PROCESS consists, therefore, in integrally managing each of the transactions or processes that the company carries out. Systems coordinate functions, regardless of who performs them. All responsibility for the transaction rests with a manager who delegates, but retaining the final responsibility for the successful completion of each transaction. The GENERAL MANAGEMENT participates in the coordination and conflicts between processes but not in a specific transaction or process, except by exception.

Each person involved in the process should not always think about how to do better what they are doing (division of labor), but why and for whom they do it; since the satisfaction of the internal or external client is determined by the coherent development of the process as a whole rather than by the correct performance of each individual function or activity.

In PROCESS MANAGEMENT, attention is focused on the result of the processes, not on the tasks or activities. There is information about the final result and everyone knows how individual work contributes to the global process; which translates into a responsibility with the total process and not with your personal task (duty).

THE PROCESS MANAGEMENT is based on assigning a manager responsible for each of the business processes. In its most radical form, the departmental organization is replaced. In other, perhaps transitional, forms, the departmental structure is maintained, but the person responsible for a process has responsibility for it, and at least as far as that process is concerned, it may have authority over the functional (matrix) managers.

Process management has the following characteristics:

• Analyze the limitations of the vertical functional organization to improve the competitiveness of the Company.

• Recognize the existence of internal processes (relevant):

- Identify the processes related to the critical factors for the success of the Company or that provide competitive advantage.

- Measure their performance (Quality, Cost and deadline) and put it in relation to the added value perceived by the client.

• Identify the needs of external customers and guide the Company towards their satisfaction.

• Understand the differences in scope between process-oriented improvement (what and for whom things are done) and that focused on departments or functions (how it is done):

- Productivity of the set versus the individual (Global effectiveness vs. Partial effectiveness).

- The department is a link in the chain, a process to which it adds value

- Organization around results, not tasks.

• Assign personal responsibilities to each process.

• Establish performance indicators and improvement objectives in each process.

• Evaluate the capacity of the process to satisfy them.

• Keep them under control, reducing their variability and dependence on non-random causes (Use statistical process control charts to make quality and cost predictable).

• Continuously improve its global operation limiting its common variability

• Measure the degree of satisfaction of the internal or external client, and put it in relation to the evaluation of personal performance.

The difficulty, great by the way, does not stow in the technical component of this way of managing a Company, but in changing people's attitudes. Some of the paradigms under which we have been educated, such as the Taylorian logic, the organization chart and the Hierarchy, have to be called into question, as well as certain cultural values now seen as a brake on creativity.

The behavioral changes, especially in managers and executives, necessary to manage the processes of the Company are summarized in:

1. External orientation towards the client, as opposed to internal orientation to the product.

2. To merge in people thought and improvement action against the Taylorian logic. It is not about working more but working differently.

3. Commitment to results versus compliance.

4. Processes and clients versus departments and bosses.

5. Participation and support against hierarchy and control.

6. Responsibility for the process against functional hierarchical authority.

The processes are always designed by managers; When they are focused on satisfying certain internal needs, such as control or limitations of departmental responsibility, they incorporate a series of activities of doubtful added value. If we clearly define the mission and objectives of the processes in terms of the added value perceived by customers, those activities considered ineffective and therefore essential will automatically become apparent.

Process Management Objectives

• As a quality management system, the main objective of Process Management is to increase the Company's results by achieving higher levels of customer satisfaction. In addition to increasing productivity through:

Reduce unnecessary internal costs (activities without added value). Shorten delivery times (reduce cycle times). Improve the quality and value perceived by customers so that it is pleasant for them to work with the supplier. Incorporate additional service activities, low cost, whose value is easy to perceive by the customer (eg: Information)

To understand Process Management we can consider it as a system whose main elements are:

• The key processes

• Coordination and control of its operation.

• Managing your improvement.

Without a doubt, a Company of this type with highly autonomous process teams is more agile, efficient, flexible and enterprising than the classic bureaucratic functional organizations. It is also closer and better aimed at the client.

In conclusion, the ultimate goal of PROCESS MANAGEMENT is to make the improvement of customer satisfaction compatible with better business results.

Process management is easily understood by its overwhelming logic, but it is difficult to assimilate due to the paradigmatic changes it contains.

Some differences between process organizations and traditional functional organization:

- Processes: From complex to simple

- Activities: From simple to complex.

- Indicators: Performance or results.

- Personnel: From controlled to empowered.

- Manager: From controller to coach / Leader

MANAGEMENT BY FUNCTIONS

PROCESS MANAGEMENT

Specialized departments Organizational form department

Functional bosses

Hierarchy - control