Organizations are as effective and efficient as their processes. Most of them have become aware of this –also encouraged by the new ISO 9001: 2000 and EFQM- and are considering how to improve processes and avoid some common problems such as: poor customer focus, low process performance, departmental barriers, useless threads due to the lack of global vision of the process, excessive inspections, reprocessing, etc.
In fact, in a reengineering and process management project, it is not surprising that some of the new processes improve their performance by 100%, achieving average performance increases of around 30%. As an example and may be a typical case, a few months ago, in a project of this profile in an industry in the automotive sector, the Improven Consultores team achieved an increase in productivity of plant processes of 52% with little investment, achieving shoot customer profitability.
A process can be defined as a set of interrelated activities that, from one or more inputs of materials or information, give rise to one or more outputs also of materials or information with added value. In other words, it is the way things are done in the organization.
Examples of processes are the production and delivery of goods and / or services, customer relationship management, strategy development, new product / service development,… These processes must be properly managed using different process management tools.
Management by processes will not be discussed in this article because, due to the depth and interest of this concept, it will be discussed in subsequent articles.
The general objectives of reengineering and process management are:
1. Greater economic benefits due to both the reduction in costs associated with the process and the increased performance of the processes.
2. Increased customer satisfaction due to reduced service time and improved product / service quality.
3. Greater staff satisfaction due to a better definition of processes and tasks
4. Greater knowledge and control of processes
5. Achieve a better flow of information and materials
6. Decrease in product or service process times.
7. Greater flexibility regarding customer needs
Thus, the ideal situation is to face an initial reengineering of processes and from there, work with the concepts of continuous improvement. For this we propose the following methodology:
In this way the methodology schematically would be:
0.- Creation of the global project team.
This will be the team that will lead the transformation of the organization and in which senior management must be involved.
1.- Define the company's process map by analyzing the key processes (that is, those that have the most impact on the organization's results)
The process map helps us to identify and interrelate the processes since this is the first step to understand and improve them.
Because resources are essentially limited, in a project like this, prioritizing in the most important processes is definitive for the success of the project, for this, it is first necessary to identify what are the organization's Critical Success Factors (FCEs), that is, the elements that define the success of the organization.
2.- Relate the company's strategy and strategic objectives to the process indicators using tools such as the Balanced Scorecard strategic map.
In a project like this, it is key to link strategy to processes and we achieve this by linking process indicators to the company's strategic objectives.
This relationship causes an effect that can be developed with tools such as the Balanced Scorecard strategic map, which is key to the success of the organization. It is also very important to define the objective indicators, that is, the objectives and the vision that we define for each of the processes and that will serve to focus efforts on both reengineering and continuous improvement.
Defining objectives for the indicators is essential for the process of continuous improvement and reengineering since if we do not know where we want to go, it is difficult to choose the path well.
3.- Creation of teams for each one of the processes defining the leader of the process as well as the indicators for each one of them.
Teams must be created to work in each of the processes seeking the maximum involvement of all people with training and internal communication.
In addition, the definition of process leader - in a collaborative way as well as the process indicators will be very important.
4.- Process reengineering
To face the reengineering of processes, there are methodologies that are beyond the contents of this article but are basically based on five concepts:
- Solid and proven methodology for the development and implementation of reengineering The knowledge of the processes of the members of the organization The best practices (best practices) usually provided by external consultants to the organization. The information systems that support the new processes. A global view of processes that manages not only to optimize processes locally but globally.
5.- Continuous improvement of processes using specific techniques.
After reengineering, you are ready to start the process of continuous improvement, although you should never rule out facing new reengineering.
Within the concepts of continuous improvement, the PDCA cycle (Plan, Do, Control, Correct) is basically used, using different tools such as Six Sigma, TPM (Total Productive Maintenance), cost management by activity (ABM), flow charts, graphs control - statistical process control (SPC), cause-effect diagrams, quality function display (QFD)…
6.- Monitoring and control.
Although it is implicit within the concepts of continuous improvement, it is important to highlight that a project of this profile will lead to continuous monitoring and control of processes to achieve optimization and control.
It is important to highlight the difference between reengineering and process management. A reengineering project brings a radical benefit to processes and therefore to business results.
Compared to continuous improvement projects that achieve incremental improvements, reengineering achieves radical improvements as shown in the following graph:
Within the concept of reengineering, the incorporation of new technologies allows the processes to be redefined reaching degrees of effectiveness and efficiency unimaginable a few years ago. Organizations that are able to discover these possibilities and implement them correctly will achieve competitive advantages by achieving:
1. Optimization of business processes.
2. Access to reliable, accurate and timely information.
3. The possibility of sharing information among all the components of the organization.
4. Deletion of data and unnecessary operations.
5. Reduction of time and process costs.
As for the processes that have opportunities for improvement, in any process in which there are exchanges of information, the impact of New Technologies will be very important. One of the most important possibilities in improving your processes using the Internet is the possibility of sending information quickly through the value chain.
In conclusion, I believe that we should pay more attention to the processes of our organizations and treat them in the right way to increase the profitability of the organization as a whole.
