Particularly in this economy, the need to reduce costs is
more important than ever. There are
several questions that help address the decisions about where to make changes:
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If you are experiencing reductions in your
workforce, aren't you still trying to maintain the level of service to your
customers and clients?
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If your processes aren't optimized, have you
seen rework and delays that frustrate not only the customers but also your
employees?
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Are your processes producing excessive and
costly waste?
You can impact each of these areas of your organization by taking
a process perspective. Consider the
definition of a process that focuses on completing a series of steps, one after
the other, to create an end result, such as a product or service. Taken from this view, a process can include,
for example, conducting a meeting, manufacturing a product, offering a service
to a customer or patient care in a healthcare setting, producing a report, or
many other examples. Examples of waste,
rework, and delays are easy to think of: How many times have you been part of a
meeting with no end result, one that had numerous people talking at once, no
focused purpose, and left you and others feeling frustrated and unsatisfied or
confused about what course of action to take at the conclusion of the
meeting? The measures of hours and cost
of such meetings has been documented at astonishing levels.
Process improvement follows some general and specific steps:
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Choose a process to focus on.
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Articulate the steps of the process in their
logical order.
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Look at the steps and assess the efficiency and
effectiveness of the process. In other
words, examine to what extent the steps of the process are impacted by rework
and other delays. Taken as a portion of
the process cost, these efficiency and effectiveness measures can help you
determine the significance of the impact on the process.
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Use the assessments of process efficiency and
effectiveness to point you in the direction of where to develop and implement
solutions to the problems. For example,
suppose you find that an ineffective meeting is impacting the time, energy, and
productivity of 10 people and ultimately wasting 10 - 20 hours that could be
far better spent. This is not an
uncommon example.
What are you waiting for?
Why not take some steps to improve your processes?