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Process Management Review

I realize there’s a lot of stuff on this site that may obscure what you’re looking for. If you want to read about process design, management, and improvement, these articles will interest you. Just click on the name of the article to go to it.

  • The Process Matrix. A good way to identify your key work processes, requirements, and performance measures—and to see what’s missing.

Process thinking and a systems perspective are key characteristics of Baldrige Award recipients. If you know what your key processes are and systematically improve them, your management will deliver a competitive advantage.

4Jan2010 | Steve George | 2 comments | Continued

3 Steps to Finding Your Key Processes

The Baldrige Criteria ask what your key work processes are. Baldrige defines these as “your most important internal value creation processes.” If you’re still confused, use these three steps to identify your key work processes.

  1. Based on what your key customers tell you, what does your organization provide them that they value? What are the main products or services that key customers expect to buy or receive from you? What are the processes that produce each? What are the steps from the input of materials and/or information to the output (the product or service)? How would you name the process for internal identification?
  2. Which processes are essential to your organization’s purpose? Which processes cost the most in terms of time and money? Which processes will help you compete in the future? Which processes transform information or materials to make it valuable to your customers?
  3. Rate each process using these questions: How central is the process to our organization’s strategic plan and competitive success? How central is the process to attracting new customers and retaining existing ones? Which processes do key customers feel are central to their satisfaction and loyalty? (And don’t assume you know the answer: Ask them.)

The processes at the top of the list tend to address product/healthcare/program design, production, and delivery, customer/patient/student support, supply chain management, and key support processes.

To find out more about process management, read:

18Dec2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued

My Personal Baldrige: Process

Baldrige is a process model. The first six categories in the Baldrige Criteria ask “how” things are done more than 130 times—and “how” means “what’s the process.” Processes are evaluated based on how systematic and effective your approaches are, how consistently they are deployed, how systematically they are evaluated and improved, and how well they are aligned with what your organization is trying to accomplish. In addition, the Process Management category specifically explores how you design, manage, and improve your key processes.

Here are steps you can take to apply process thinking to your job:

  1. Identify the processes you participate in. Everything you do is part of a process.
  2. For each process, figure out who your customers and suppliers are (they may be internal).
  3. Determine your, your customers’, and your suppliers’ requirements. You all have requirements of the process, i.e, levels of quality, delivery, service, and cost. Ask customers and suppliers what their requirements are.
  4. Identify measures you can use to evaluate how well these requirements are being met and start collecting and graphing the data for these measures. You can find information about tools to collect and analyze data here.
  5. When you have enough data (you need three data points to show a trend, so start with three months of data), analyze it to see how your part of the process is performing.
  6. If there’s a noticeable decline in performance or if the level of performance isn’t very good, use tools your organization specifies to…
1Dec2009 | Steve George | 1 comment | Continued

How to Integrate Baldrige

Once senior leadership has decided to integrate Baldrige, the first thing you need to do is a Baldrige assessment. Read “10 Steps to an Effective Baldrige Assessment” for guidance on how to do this.

There’s no shortcut around this step. Sure, there are Baldrige surveys and abbreviated assessments you can do, but they do not provide feedback about all elements of your management system, nor do they give you an accurate picture of your entire management system. You need a full-blown assessment to effectively integrate the Baldrige model.

The ninth step in the assessment process is to act on the evaluation. The evaluation will have a number of opportunities for improvement (OFIs) across all categories of the Criteria and a few major OFIs that affect multiple areas. Start with these. As a senior leadership team, discuss the evaluation and the OFIs and prioritize them based on what you believe is most important for the short- and long-term success of the organization.

Next, figure out how you will tackle the top two or three OFIs. The reason it’s only two or three is that these opportunities are big, cross-functional gaps like redesigning the strategic planning process, developing a balanced scorecard, or implementing a formal approach to process management. If you don’t have a systematic process in place for acting on these opportunities, this is a good place to begin deploying Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA).

In my experience, at the start of their Baldrige…

25Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued

10 Critical Questions: Process Management

The Baldrige Criteria describe a process model. Six of the seven Criteria Categories ask powerful questions about the key processes necessary to operate a high-performing organization. Your responses to those questions are evaluated based on the effectiveness of your approaches, how widely and consistently they are deployed, how systematically they are refined, and how well they are aligned with your organizational needs.

The Process Management Category asks how you design your work systems and how you design, manage, and improve your key work processes. The best way to evaluate how well you do this is through a Baldrige assessment using the Baldrige Criteria. You can find out how to do that here. If you cannot do a full assessment but want insight into how to improve process management, here are 10 critical questions to ask and answer:

  1. How do you design and innovate your overall work system (how the work of your organization is accomplished)?
  2. How do your work systems and key work processes (your most important internal value creation processes) relate to and capitalize on your core competencies?
  3. What are your key work processes?
  4. How do you determine the key requirements for these processes and what are they?
  5. How do you design and innovate your work processes to meet these requirements?
  6. How do you ensure that the day-to-day operation of these processes meets their key process requirements?
  7. What are the key performance measures and in-process measures used to control and improve these…
26Oct2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued

5 Powerful Process Questions

Organizations new to process thinking—and there are a lot of them, even in healthcare and education, which you would expect to be more process oriented because of the continuum of care and educating students for nearly two decades, but are decidedly not—welcome new tools that will help them make the transition from a functional, silo mentality to process thinking.

Here is an approach that any type of organization can use. It is part of a system of process management and continuous improvement in place at Brevard Public Schools (BPS), a large public school district that received Florida’s 2007 Governor’s Sterling Award and is in the running for this year’s Baldrige Award. The system asks and answers simple but powerful questions:

  • What do you do and what needs are you meeting? (Process name and description)
  • How do you do it? (Process flow chart)
  • How do you know you are doing a good job? (Status of outcome measures)
  • How do you monitor the process to ensure you meet or exceed customer requirements? (Status of in-process or predictor measures)
  • How do you improve? (PDCA, DMAIC, and by-the-numbers)

To make sure these questions are systematically and effectively addressed, BPS trained its senior staff, district leadership, and functional managers in 2006 and 2007 and then trained its principals and school leaders in 2008 and 2009. According to a case study published by ASQ, “more than 100 priority processes have been identified with defined process control systems. The district believes that a key to sustaining…

21Aug2009 | Steve George | 1 comment | Continued
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