Business Process Improvement Methodologies

The business process improvement methodology in the Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) business management system gives focus to business area enhancements that will benefit the big picture.

The article ″Shortsighted and Shortchanged″, was published in the magazine Six Sigma Forum Magazine. This article, written by Jim Bossert, presented many valid points.

I will now highlight the issues presented in the article and then provide a business process improvement methodologies enhancement system that addresses these issues.

Business Process Improvement Methodology: Article Highlights

The following points were made in Jim’s article:

Organizations often initiate an improvement effort (e.g., Six Sigma, Lean or process excellence) and then in a short period of time management wants to significantly reduce the amount of training that is associated with the improvement efforts.
Management change in direction relative to making improvements might be considered a bipolar behavior.
Management often goes back to old habits after given the opportunity to improve.
Organizations often are not ready for change because there can be a lack of focus, true leadership, and/or right skill set.
Often a lack of focus for process improvement efforts exist because there is much emphasis to beat expectations for the next quarter, without much thought beyond this time frame.
Hoshin planning can help prevent short-term thinking; however, this effort can become an exercise in futility.
When there training periods are compressed, management is demonstrating that emphasis is given to busy work, rather than improvement efforts.
Management needs to demonstrate that there is commitment to doing the right thing, which is followed up by aligned actions with accountability.
Consequence must be present to leaders who fail to deliver and/or act.
When the organization believes there is leadership commitment, improvements can be executed by the work force.

Jim highlighted what often occurs in an organizational improvement program. I have seen similar occurrences.

Business Process Improvement Methodology Enhancement Needs

My question is whether something should be done differently in a business process improvement deployment so that the above issues don’t occur. To me the answer is yes, but some things need to be addressed differently in the deployment.

What I think needs to be included in this enhanced deployment is:

The inclusion of a predictive scorecarding system (e.g., 30,000-foot-level performance metric reporting) that transitions from red-yellow-green type reports, which can lead to much firefight and/or unhealthy, if not destructive behaviors. This would address Jim’s point relative to focus only on meeting quarterly numerical goals without much/any regard to the process that created the performance number.
There needs to be direct linkage between the above described 30,000-foot-level report outs and the processes that create these operational metrics, where one understands that if the 30,000-foot-level reporting is providing an undesirable response then the process needs to be enhanced.
There needs to be an owner for each of the 30,000-foot-level operational metrics, where these metrics are automatically updated (e.g., once a day) and are available through a ″click of the mouse″ to anyone who has authorization.
Strategies need to be created through the use of analytics and innovative thinking so that there are targeted strategies and not just strategic worded like ″we are to be the best of the best″. The wording of strategic statements should be such that they do not lead to different interpretations about what should be done.
Strategic improvement projects need to be identified so that the enterprise as a whole benefits; i.e., avoidance of projects that may look initially good but does little to benefit the big picture.
Identify 30,000-foot-level operational metrics that are to be improved so that the enterprise as a whole benefits; i.e., predictive performance improvement needs ″pull″ for the creation of one or more projects that benefit the metric.
Create a reporting system (e.g., monthly or quarterly) where the status of these key performance metrics and associated improvement efforts are described to executives.
Inclusion of both predictive performance metrics and process documentation in an organization’s value chain, from which targeted improvement efforts (so that the big picture benefits) are created.

Business Process Improvement Methodology Enhancement System

A system is needed so that improvement projects don’t fall off someone’s plate. With a deployment system where 30,000-foot-level performance reporting needs are pulling for project creation, this will not occur since the process owner of the metric will be reporting to his boss’ boss the status of his performance metric report-out and associated improvement effort.

A system that addresses all the above needs is called Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE), which consists of the following nine steps.

In the IEE system, one should note how identify and execute (strategic improvement) projects is step 7 in this 9-step methodology. If as strategic project was successful, then the associated processes were improved, which impacted the operational 30,000-foot-level metric (step 2 of the 9-step system). This improvement then would be positively impact the satellite-level (financial) metric, which is also part of the IEE value chain in step 2.

Note also how step 9 loops back to step 3 (not step one). This is not unlike the creation of a Deming’s plan-do-check-act process for the enterprise as a whole.

The IEE system address the business management system issues described in a one-minute video: