Asa p Ma na g e m e nt C onsu lt a nt s P vt . Lt d.

Process Focus
Volume 1, Issue 1

April 2008

We wish all our clients a successful and excellent financial year ahead. We start this year with this News Letter that would enable us to share with you our experiences. Please feel free to let us know your suggestions to improve this. Send your suggestions to editor

Process is the heart of whatever business we do. Irrespective of the business or department that we manage, we have a customer. These customers have some requirements. Some of these requirements are expressed explicitly and some are not. These requirements are fulfilled by providing an OUTPUT that satisfies the customers. Each of these outputs are produce of a Process that we may manage. (See the table in this page)

The challenge each process owner faces in managing his processes is multi fold. Most result of these challenges into Variations in

Output/ Process/ Input.

Process Improvement and Innovation is all about managing these variations. Efficient and Effective management of these variations would require understanding them. We would need to understand the sources of variation in the output. The variation in output can originate from any of the following sources:
While every process displays
variation, display while some processes variation, displays

1. Processes that produces these outputs 2. Rules that governs the process 3. Methods adopted in execution of the process 4. Skills & Experience of the people involved in the process 5. Facility and Equipment used in the process
Continues ...

controlled others

uncontrolled variation

Walter Shewart

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We have completed 13 years of service to industry this March. We had several proud moments in our journey. I would like to extend my personal thanks and also thank on behalf of my organization to all those who have
#1, Ponnamal Nagar Ramapuram Chennai 600089 Tamilnadu, India

made us and helped us in attaining a few milestones in our journey. I would dedicate this section to talk about some of them in each of our issue. Our journey began in 1995 as a one person organization . I am thankful to Kancor Flavours & Extracts Limited and Vallabhdas Kanji Limited to have given us an opportunity to serve them and enable us to start our business. I and my organisation would extend our special thank to Mr. Sanjay Mariwala and Mr. Ajay Mariwala for their continued support. Their group companies where we provided our services were Auto Hanger in Mumbai and OmniActives Health

Phone: +91 44 2249 6371/ 2249 6380/ 2249 0356 Hand Phone : +91 98400 96048/ 93828 56186 Fax: +91 44 2249 6371 E-mail: pgs@amc-india.com; pgs@amc.co.in

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Technologies in Mumbai & Pune. We started with consulting on ERP system implementation and Process Definitions. We subsequently did HACCP, GMP Audits, ISO 22000 and now Pay Roll Processing. We have grown as they continued their trust on us. I

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thank them for the faith on us and we look forward to continue our association in mutually beneficial manner.

...Continued

Frog and Lily Pond

of variation that would lead to
A colony of frog were living in pond. The pond had some lily pads in one corner. A chemical pollutant has entered this pond and the result of that was lily pads were doubling in their coverage of the pond every day. The frogs have a problem with this growth as they will not survive if the pond gets occupied by these lily pads. The frogs have a solution to overcome this problem. They would need 10 days to work on the solution. If we assume that it takes 50 days for the pond to get covered by the Lily Pad, the frogs cannot afford to start their work on the problem anytime after 40th day. Identifying the problem on 40th day would be virtually impossible to even recognize the problem as only 1/ 210 of the pond is covered by Lily Pad. In most of our real life problem the problem is not visible to us through naked eyes. We need special tools and glasses to recognize them. We are affected by Boiled Frog Syndrome when it come to recognizing the changes.

The

nature

Improvement and Innovation are normally that of common nature. Any action on sporadic variation (commonly expressed as breakdowns or special cause) is important as they help in bringing the process back to normal. In most practical situations the variations are brought to our notice after it has become large. I am reminded of a story of a Frog Colony in a Pond that had a Lily Pad (Read Story in the side box). We will understand how to identify these variation in next issue.

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