Article Contributed by Cameron Johnson
Eliminating redundant and time-consuming business processes is critical to improving workplace efficiencies, reducing operating costs and simplifying how employees complete complex tasks. However, success always involves a willingness of all team members to be active participants in the process. In the end, it’s up to the company to make sure that everyone benefits from collaborative efforts.
Surprisingly, far too many companies ignore their business processes. These are the enterprises who are unable to define the high costs of waste. These are the enterprises that are unable to properly define the costs associated with repetitive business processes, ones that add time and create unnecessary backlogs. However, there are other enterprises who understand that eliminating these often laborious and prolonged processes helps to lower costs by creating clarity for the company’s workforce. So, what are some of the more popular ways to map out your business processes?
• Spaghetti Diagrams
When manufacturers look to declutter their shop floor, and reduce travel times between production cells, they turn to the time-tested strategy of spaghetti diagrams. However, this Six Sigma tool isn’t just mean for manufacturers. Hospitals, laboratories, research centers and businesses can all benefit from using spaghetti diagrams. The end results is a tool that helps you define unnecessary process steps and procedures that create delays and downtime.
For a manufacturer, the process involves laying out the shop floor and clearly defining each individual work station. Next, you draw a line from the beginning of the production process all the way to the end. You make sure to use sequential numbers to define each step of the process. Finally, you use a measuring wheel in order to define the distance and time traveled from one station to the next.
This exercise will help you identify backlogs, redundant processes and time-wasting procedures. After defining the natural flow of work, it’s common for companies to completely redesign their shop floor in order to reduce the time it takes for work to travel between adjacent work cells. Ultimately, this will help you define physical obstacles like pillars, beams and ill-placed machinery that obstructs the flow of parts across your shop floor. It will also help you identify work-related interruptions and delays where production employees are forced to wait for approvals, sign-offs, and or process checks before moving parts to the next work cell.
• Business Process Mapping
Our first example focused on how physical parts move from one chain to the next. This current example focuses on how paperwork and business information flows from one department to the next. A number of companies rely upon BPM software when doing this exercise as the changes need to be recorded and registered for future reference.
Business process mapping typically starts by defining an incoming customer request for proposal. Squares, rectangles, triangles and ovals are all used to define different decision making and workflow processes. Flow lines and arrow connectors designate how work moves from one internal department and one decision maker to the next. Backlogs and redundant processes are itemized and rerouted in order to simplify workflow and eliminate repetitive steps.
• Flow Process and Organizational Charts
Flow processes are more geared towards defining the individual process steps in manufacturing or processing of a given finished good. They clearly outline human operations and human decision making steps relative to machine operations and machine-related decision making steps.
Organization charts aim to provide clarity to a company’s reporting structure by clearly defining the interdependent relationships between employees, managers, and stakeholders. Again, various shapes such as squares, rectangles and triangles are used to designate different roles, departments, business functions and individual responsibilities. This is an idea tool for new employees, ones who must come to understand the company’s internal reporting structure and how best to navigate the company’s inner workings.
Each of these three aforementioned business process mapping tools are geared towards eliminating time-consuming delays and labor-intensive operations. They are excellent tools to familiarize new employees with the company’s reporting structure, while also helping to define the roles and responsibilities of management and direct reports.
About the author: Cameron Johnson is a business consultant and entrepreneur. Over the course of his career he has conducted case studies on both social media optimization and non-profit marketing. Cameron has also had the opportunity to speak at international business conferences and was recently recognized as one of the world’s top 100 advertising experts to follow on social media.