Standardize to Improve, Part 1

Business process mapping

Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System, once said, “Where there is no standard [process], there can be no kaizen [improvement].”

In an earlier column, I wrote about how we used the customer-output-process-input-supplier (COPIS) method, which is a customer-first or an outside-in strategic approach, to identify a master list of all the business processes that a company needs. Once you have created this process master list, the next step is to actually map out or document how to do each process on the master list, which is what I’ll discuss in this column: business process mapping.

When I first wrote this, I used examples from businesses like insurance, car manufacturing, hospitals, and commercial finance. But then on second thought, I replaced all that boring stuff with the delicious story of Grandma Cakes. I believe it will illustrate the concept equally well, and hope you will enjoy the story at the same time. Here goes.

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Comments

Render unto manufacturing what is manufacturings . . .

At the risk of creating cognitive dissonance for this community, I find it necessary to put forth a different view.

Manufacturing and service have different problems to solve. Where standardization is wholly the right thing to do in manufacturing, it runs into problems with the variety of demands received by service. "Grandma Cakes" is a manufacturing example. Customers not only want a red one, but they want it by tomorrow and to be able to pick it up before noon and help with the accessories they need. It's difficult to standardize against this type of variety.

Sure you "can" standardize in service, but you risk ignoring variety and having employees "check their brains at the door." The risk of ignoring variety is increase complaints, lost business and additional demands to resolve . . . all costly to service businesses.

If we are to restore the individual in this country (or any country). Let's give front-line workers guidelines, principles and the responsibility to satisfy customer demands to the customer's delight. Costs will drop, revenue will increase and you have the start of a work design that will make workers happy.

A Question of Balance #2

I agree with T. Babbit's comment, though partially: I'm especially not tuned in with the last sentence; it's high time to stop assigning front-line workers the responsibility of customer satisfaction, of product - or service - quality awareness. Any organizations' waste is not made in manufacturing but well up above, at design and management levels. When we'll look in the mirror, shaving or making up ourselves in the morning, and have the courage to say ourselves such words, may be something will really improve.

Clarification

Front-line workers are best attuned to customer desires. Given the responsibility to work them end-to-end, workers can do amazing things. Management's job in service is to enable the worker to achieve this through better design and principles.

A Question of Balance

By making process mapping compulsory, ISO 9000 has done more evil than good, it made organizations only think of how CHARTING processes, instead of thinking how processes RUN. Even if they were trained like ships' captains, organizations' top managers still run processes - and will probably always run them - "by sight": some degree of documented process mapping might certainly reveal itself beneficial to some institutions - especially in the public business - but it will never be a magician's rod to solve organizations' problems. Where there's no will, there's no way.

This is fundemental process control

What this described is fundemental for developing controls in for any business process. The only thing missing is the the assignment of the Risk Levels for Safety, Occurance and Detection to come up with an RPN, Risk Priority Number, so high risk process steps can be identified for additional controls.

And, yes, it could lead to mindless activities, but it can be used for ensuring that the process, as designed, is being followed, reducing variation. If and when something goes wrong it becomes much easier to determine if it is common cause or special cause and take appropriate action, including modifying the process or controls to prevent a re-occurance.

Easy for manufacturing . . . not so much for service

Hi Gordon-

I see you are from manufacturing too.

There is application for control charts in service - no doubt. However, the inspection regime comes with great cost in service. Once service is rendered . . . inspecting it is too late. We need to build work designs in service that are self-inspecting where the deliverer of service knows the quality before leaving, hanging up, etc.

I am afraid we have over-engineered our "control" to the point that bureaucracy has taken over and costs increase. Controls are making us less competitive in service. Standardization,process control, etc. are creating waste in inspection and its inability to absorb variety that service gives us.

Hi Tripp, Yes, I

Hi Tripp,

Yes, I have manufacturing in my background, also the development for those manufacturing and service processes. I guess it came across that I advocate the use of control charts, which isn't the case. I do advocate standardized processes where it makes good business sense.

In the area of service, I can see the use of standardized processes to render the service contracted for. For example, your company is contracted to give a course on program management to 8 offices of the client. I believe a standardized training program would be called for to ensure the same content was shared leading to a common outcome. The standardized training would still leave room for each of the trainers to give the training according to their personality and style of presentation, but would ensure the content was delivered.

But then, perhaps I have misunderstood this whole conversation.

Is Standardization relevant to Services?

I am grateful for the interest that this article has generated. The article is written based on the personal experience of nearly 3 decades as a practitioner, having helped several companies implement Quality - including Standardized business processes. While I have worked with manufacturing as well as service companies, I have actually spent even more years working with service companies. We found standardization to be as relevant and vital in services as in manufacturing. In fact, in a few service organizations, we had to initially fight this tendency to generalize that "standardization is not relevant in services". Once this mindset was cured, they achieved significant benefits from standardization. In my experience, it is not a question of whether you are in manufacturing or services (in fact, as Crosby said, much of the work within manufacturing companies is also service) - but a question of scale. If the scale on which a particular activity is carried out exceeds a certain threshold, and if the activity tends to be repetitive, and if the activity is going to be done by more than one or a few people, standardization becomes relevant! Now this activity can be fixing seats to cars in an automobile factory, or processing applications for opening accounts in a bank, or giving customers new connections in a phone company. That said, I completely agree that we have to be careful that standardization does not deteriorate into mindless bureaucracy - whether in manufacturing or service. In Part 2 of this article, I have dealt with the question of whether standardization kills innovation.