BM1 – OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT (TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT)

VII– PROCESS DESIGN

Process is a collection of linked tasks which find their end in a delivery of a product or service to a
client. It is also defined as a set of activities and tasks that once completed, will accomplish an
organizational goal.

Essentially all work in an organization is performed by some process. Common business

process include:
 Acquiring customers and market knowledge
 Strategic planning
 Conducting research and development
 Purchasing
 Developing new products or services
 Fulfilling customer orders
 Managing information
 Measuring and analyzing performance
 Training employees

To apply the techniques of process design and management, processes must be:
1. repeatable – the process must recur over time
2. measurable – can capture important quality and performance indicators to reveal patterns
about process performance. Each measurement should aim for a standard or target that is
driven by customer requirements.

Well-designed processes that meet the needs of the customer are essential if an organization
is to be competitive. The design of processes may be determined by customer requirements or
benchmarking competitors or may be directly related to meeting strategic objectives.
Process design will not just be considered at the level of individual activities within
manufacturing and service processes but at the level of processes across functional areas such as
operations, marketing and finance and at the level of processes across organizations in the supply
chain.

Process design and management activities help to

a. prevent defects and errors
b. eliminate waste and redundancy
c. and thereby lead to better quality and improved company performance through
 shorter cycle times
 improved flexibility
  faster and more consistent customer response

“Unless you change the process, why would you expect the results to change?”

TYPES OF PROCESSES

Value-creating/Core Processes – most important to “running a business” and maintaining or

achieving a sustainable competitive advantage.
• Drive the creation of products and services
• Critical to customer satisfaction
• Have major impact of the strategic goals of an org

Support Processes – those that re most important to an organization’s value-creation processes,

employees and daily operations but generally do not add value directly to the product or service.
• Example – order entry for a manufacturer
• (But this maybe a value-creation process for an online seller)

CONTROL AND IMPROVEMENT

Once a process is designed and operational, it must be controlled on a short-term basis and
improved over the long run

Control- removing the causes of abnormalities and maintaining consistent performance.

(abnormal conditions or unusual events that may cause departure from the average/normal
pattern/level)

Improvement - changing the average performance to a new level or reducing variation around the
current average performance.
(even a controlled process that has too much variation can be detrimental to customer satisfaction
and financial performance)

Process Owners – individual or groups that are accountable for process performance and have the
authority to manage and improve their process.
 can be high-level executives or workers who run a manufacturing cell
 assigning process owners ensures that someone is responsible for managing the process and
optimizing its effectiveness.
STEPS IN PROCESS DESIGN

1. Identify opportunities for process improvement

 Start with the core processes
 Check against the performance objectives
 Importance-performance analysis
 Balanced scorecard
 Data can be derived from:
o Formal studies
o Customer feedback
o Employee ideas from suggestion scheme
o Benchmarking

2. Document the process design

 A data collection exercise using methods as
o Examining current documentation
o Interviews
o observations

3. Redesign the process

Three approaches that can be used to generate new ideas:
• Brainstorming
• Modifying existing designs
• Benchmark “established” design
AREAS FOR POTENTIAL REDESIGN
Eliminate Simplify Integrate Automate
Over-production Forms Jobs Dirty
Waiting time Procedures Teams Dangerous
Transport Communication Customers Difficult
Processing Technology Suppliers Boring
Inventory Problem areas Data capture
Defects/Failures Flows Data transfer
Duplication Processes Data analysis
Inspection
Reconciling

A good process design focuses on the prevention of poor quality by ensuring that goods and
services meet both external and internal customer requirements and that the process is capable of
achieving the requisite level of performance.
TOOLS FOR PROCESS DESIGN

Process Map or Flow Chart

A useful way of understanding any business
process and showing the interrelationships between
activities in the process.
This can help identify and fix problems with the
process, assist in developing new processes and comparing
the design of similar processes.

Service Blueprint – a picture or map that accurately portrays the service system so that
the different people involved in providing it can understand and deal with it objectively
regardless of their roles or their individual points of view.

A service blueprint visually displays the service by simultaneously depicting the

process of service delivery, the points of customer contact, the roles of customers and
employees, and the visible elements of the service.

Key Components of a Service Blueprint

1. Physical evidence – all tangibles that

customers come in contact with during the
service experience that impact their
customer quality perceptions.
2. Customer actions – encompass the
steps, choices, and interactions that the
customer performs in the process of
purchasing, consuming, and evaluating the
service.
3. “Onstage” contact employee actions
– the steps and activities that the contact
employee performs that are visible to the
customer.
4. “Backstage” contact employee actions – those contact employee actions that occur
behind the scenes to support the onstage activities; all nonvisible contact employee
actions
5. Support processes – covers the internal services, steps, and interactions that take
place to support the contact employee in delivering the service.