All Posts Tagged With: "process improvement"
Make Change Happen: 10 Questions
Bob Murphy of Studer Group, a 2010 Baldrige Award winner, recently emailed ten questions to use when beginning a new process or evaluating an existing one. The focus of the questions is as much on changing behavior as it is on process improvement. Studer likes to talk about “hardwiring excellence” in healthcare. These ten questions can help any organization in any industry improve performance:
- Have we set clear and high targets? Will the target cause us to change our behavior?
- Have we provided education/training to all involved in designing or improving the process? Are we over-communicating the “why” behind the intended behavior or improvement?
- Has leadership made it clear that the behavior or new/improved process is mandatory, not optional? Studer Group research of over 2000 healthcare leaders indicates that when you use the word MANDATORY, 98% of employees understand that they MUST do the behavior (or follow the process). When you use the word REQUIRED, only 68% recognize that they MUST do it, and when you use the word EXPECTED, only 26% understand that they must do it. So be clear: This is mandatory!
- Are leaders being role models of the desired behavior? Not modeling it gives employees permission not to follow it either.
- Have we practiced behavior using role-play?
- Do we have a good measure of success?
- Can we report results of the verification of success transparently? Transparency reveals who is succeeding and who needs to improve.
- Are we giving positive feedback when we see the behavior done correctly? Research shows that recognized behavior gets repeated.
- Do we…
Baldrige Model: How do you design, manage and improve your key work processes?
Item 6.2 in the Baldrige Criteria asks key questions about how you design, manage, and improve your key work processes. The following processes, best practices, and problem areas look at critical issues in this part of the Baldrige model.
Your organization needs processes for:
- Designing efficient and effective work processes to meet all key requirements, including incorporating new technology, organizational knowledge, product excellence, and the need for agility
- Determining and meeting key process requirements
- Managing your supply chain including evaluating supplier performance
- Improve processes to achieve better performance, reduce variability, and improve products and services
Best practices to consider:
- Process thinking is a cultural attribute of the organization.
- Every key process and its key requirements has been identified, the processes have been mapped, in-process and end-of-process measures have been identified, and data from these measures are analyzed and used to continuously improve the processes.
- Supply chain management involves suppliers in improving quality and cycle time.
Common problem areas:
- When problems occur, people look at who to blame rather than where a process failed.
- The organization has never tried to identify its key processes or determine their requirements.
- No systematic approaches are in place to manage and improve key processes.
- Few in-process measures are taken and few end-of-process measures are used to improve performance.
- Suppliers are not treated as partners to assist in reaching your organization’s goals and objectives.
To read more about process management, click on these articles:
- Smart Question #1: What’s the Process?
- The Benefits of Process Thinking
- Ask What, Not Who
- What Process-Centered Looks Like
- 3 Steps to Finding Your Key Processes
- Keys to Successful Process Improvement
…
14Jun2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedOne Team’s Systematic Approach to Improvement
A recent case study published by ASQ tells the story of how FirstSource Solutions used tools and processes that are common among Baldrige Award winners to tackle a single problem—reducing the turnaround time (TAT) to approve applications for a retail mortgage client—with impressive results.
The client was in the United Kingdom. Here’s a synopsis of how Firstsource tackled the problem:
- It used data to define the problem: Over a nine-week period, the client offered mortgage loans in 14 days or less 69% of the time, well short of the 75% target.
- A financial benefit estimation exercise determined that improving performance on TAT to 80% would increase revenue by six million pounds annually, create a more efficient process, and provide faster service to applicants.
- Firstsource formed a team to improve TAT. The team received training on the Six Sigma DMAIC methodology and quality tools.
- The team started with a supplier-inputs-process-outputs-customer (SIPOC) exercise to create a high-level process map and identify stakeholders.
- The team produced a three-stage analysis road map to assess the current situation and identify possible root causes and improvement activities. It used the road map to agree on five causes of the longer TAT.
- The team brainstormed possible solutions and then assigned a relative rating for each solution to eliminate half of the original possibilities.
- The team validated the impact of the solutions through a one-week pilot study with a metrics dashboard that was shared with all stakeholders involved in developing solutions. Based on their feedback, the team decided to proceed with full implementation.
- The team used PDCA…
Everyone Can Improve Quality
For the first twenty years of the Baldrige Award, the weakest category in terms of scoring was measurement and analysis. While the balanced scorecard movement has helped close the measurement gap, reliable and actionable analysis of data is still a struggle for many organizations.
Minitab, an industry leader in statistical and process improvement, addresses that gap. Virtually every major Six Sigma initiative worldwide uses Minitab software, which is also used to teach statistics in more than 4,000 colleges and universities.
The great thing about Minitab software is that it turns anyone into a statistician. The latest version of its software, Minitab 16, uses an interactive decision tree to help users choose the right analytical tool and walks them through their analysis step-by-step. It can then assist with interpreting the results and producing reports.
You can see how it works by clicking on the green box on the right. A short video introduces you to the features and benefits of Minitab 16, including the ability to use the software in seven languages.
If you want to learn more, click on the “Webinars” link at the top of the Minitab 16 web page for a list of free webinars about the product, or click on “Tour” for a list of videos about the software.
If you want to take it for a spin, click on “Free Trial” and sign up for a free 30-day trial version.
To understand how organizations are using Minitab software to improve performance, check out 51 case studies by clicking here. For example, Ford…
10Feb2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBaldrige and Process Improvement
“Have you seen process owners or other organizational structures that sustain cross-functional process improvement?”
Brad Power poses this question at the end of his article, “Where Have All the Process Owners Gone?” (HBR, January 7, 2011). Anyone who’s been following Baldrige.com or been involved with integrating Baldrige or evaluating Baldrige assessments knows that some of this country’s best examples of “organizational structures that sustain cross-functional process improvement” are Baldrige Award winners.
The Baldrige model is a process model. The first six of seven categories in the Baldrige Criteria ask how you design, manage, and improve your key processes, while the seventh category requests the results of those processes. Each Baldrige Award winner has found its own way to improve processes, some of which include process owners and most of which use similar quality tools and techniques.
They have also developed systematic approaches to sustaining process improvement. Power bemoans the fact that too many organizations attempt process improvement by establishing process owners, only to revert to functional management in the end. He suggests six reasons for this; none of these reasons hold true at Baldrige Award winners.
- Attention shifted. Organizations lose their focus on process improvement when senior leaders are distracted by new or more urgent issues. Baldrige Award winners sustain their focus on process improvement through unwavering, visionary leadership.
- Roles were misunderstood. They botched the process for improving processes. Baldrige Award winners clearly define roles and responsibilities, deploy reporting and review processes to keep everything on track, and provide the necessary training for process owners, process improvement teams,…
Lessons from a 15-Story Hotel Built in 6 Days
In early November in the south-central Chinese city of Changsha, a 15-story hotel was built in six days. The foundation was already in place. The crew used prefabricated columns and modules to build different sections and arrange them on the foundation. The structure is soundproof and built to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake. No workers were injured during construction and, because of prefabrication, very little of the materials were wasted.
You can watch a fascinating, short video of the hotel going up by clicking here.
I have no way of knowing about the quality of the construction or of the individual rooms within the hotel, but the speed at which it was built is impressive. Add to that the facts that nobody was hurt, the building is soundproof (which is really important in a hotel), and there was very little waste, and you have a benchmark of sorts for construction projects.
A couple months ago I wrote about the implications of a movement to build a $300 house (click here). In that case, the goal is to serve the housing needs of people at the bottom of the pyramid, but in the case of both the $300 house and the six-day hotel, a broader challenge is being made: You can build these things much faster and much cheaper than most people imagined. If you don’t think that such faster and cheaper methods will affect construction in the U.S., you haven’t been paying attention to the impact of the global marketplace.
To stay ahead of…
21Dec2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedKeys to Successful Process Improvement
The Baldrige model is all about process improvement. The first five categories in the Baldrige Criteria focus on an organization’s key processes in leadership, strategic planning, customer relationships, measurement, and your workforce, and the sixth category asks how you design, manage, and improve these processes.
Baldrige Award winners achieve what many organizations attempt, which is to realize the benefits of process improvement in world-class results. Why do they succeed where others fail? Brad Power attempts to answer that question in “What the C-Suite Needs to Do for Process Improvement?” (HBR, December 15, 2010) He draws on 30 years of experience as a consultant to identify three reasons that process improvement initiatives fail:
- Organizations optimize processes within functions and departments rather than across them. Your most important processes involve multiple functions and departments.
- Frontline workers can’t properly contribute to company goals when they lack information about how to have an impact on them. Organizations that integrate Baldrige use strategic planning and performance measurement systems, as well as frequent communication, to show workers what the organization’s goals are and how everyone contributes to reaching them.
- Top managers can’t realize the substantial benefits of process improvements if they, rather than workers, identify what needs to change. The people who work the process are in the best position to improve it.
Power proposes three deliberate actions to turn this around:
- Listen to how well your organization meets customer expectations. The third category in the Baldrige Criteria examines how you engage your customers for long-term success. That means listening to them, measuring…
