Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System, once said, “Where there is no standard [process], there can be no kaizen [improvement].”
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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.
Grandma Cakes
Years ago, when I was a university student in America, our little bunch of friends used to drop in occasionally at our buddy Brad’s place. Brad had a lovely family, but they were going through difficult times. Brad’s dad had been laid off and was looking for a new job. His mom worked as a temp. Brad worked part-time in a local store to help pay part of his tuition. His two little sisters were in school. And, last but not the least, there was Brad’s Grandma Doris.
Grandma Doris was a big woman with a sharp tongue and a heart of gold. And her home-baked cakes were to die for. A visit to Brad’s place was incomplete without generous helpings of grandma’s cakes. Grandma was very popular at the local church, where she occasionally supplied cakes; the money from the sales went to charity. For the last couple of months, to help supplement the family income a bit, she had also started supplying cakes to the store where Brad worked. And, according to the store owner, customers loved them so much that grandma’s cakes flew off the shelf as soon as they got there.
One afternoon, during a visit to Brad’s place, a couple of us (with our mouths full of cake) half-seriously suggested to Grandma Doris that she should go into business on a larger scale and supply to more stores across the city. Grandma Doris, in her habitual loud voice, retorted, “You boys are pulling my leg! Now have some more cake and getoutta here!”
But Brad thought it was a good idea. “Why not, Grandma?” he said. “After all, your cakes get sold out in no time at my store. I’m sure they will do well at other stores, too.” Grandma Doris chased us out of the house that day, but Brad didn’t give up. During the next few days, he was able to convince her that she should get into the cake-baking business. Always willing to help the family in their difficult time, his grandma finally agreed to give it a try.
Explosive growth—the artisan multiplies herself
What happened next was amazing. In six months, Grandma Doris was supplying her cakes to 20 stores across the city. In a year, about 100 stores in the city and neighboring suburbs and towns were selling her cakes. Brad’s parents now helped Grandma Doris in her business, and they hired a few workers whom grandma trained. In three years, Grandma Cakes had become an extremely popular brand sold at more than 5,000 stores in several cities. Their cakes were now made in eight factories, and they employed about 400 people. The family was now comfortably off.
Significantly, the quality of the cakes was almost the same as what Grandma Doris used to make in her kitchen. Only connoisseurs like Brad and me could tell the almost imperceptible difference. But I guess that is a small price that had to be paid for Grandma Doris, the artisan making a cake or two in her kitchen, to scale up to Grandma Cakes, the brand delivering thousands of consistent quality cakes week after week, manufactured by hundreds of workers at eight factories in different cities.
Standardized business processes
How did this happen? No doubt Grandma Doris was a magician at cake-making, but she couldn’t be in all eight factories at the same time. So Brad’s dad did the next best thing. At the auto-parts factory where he used to work some years earlier, he had seen workers being trained for their work process. He had taken part in some of the training programs himself. Usually an experienced worker (an expert at the job) would train fresh or unskilled workers. Often, the company’s training department would create training material that documented the process steps and explained them with the help of flow-diagrams that would make it easy for the new workers to understand.
When the family’s cake business started growing, Brad and his dad persuaded Grandma Doris to teach her way of cake-making to their first batch of workers. At first, she refused to part with secret recipes she had learned from her grandma. But when Brad’s dad made her understand that this was the only way they would be able to grow the business, she reluctantly agreed. As the growth continued and more workers and factories were added, Brad made a process map of the cake-making process with his grandma’s help. On a sheet of paper, he wrote down exactly as his grandma told him, the step-by-step process of cake-making. He also wrote down the ingredients for each type of cake and other information needed for cake-making. Grandma Doris and Brad trained a few of their older workers (who had by now picked up considerable experience in cake-making under Grandma Doris’ supervision) to be trainers themselves. These trainers would now use the process map to train new workers.
Similarly, Brad and his dad documented other standard activities that happened repeatedly at their business. These included sales processes such as collecting orders and shipping cakes to stores; purchase processes such as placing orders for ingredients or packing material, and getting them delivered to the Grandma Cakes’ factories on time; and processes for calculating and paying salaries to Grandma Cakes’ employees.
Who needs standardized business processes?
There is no cookie-cutter formula to define what type of organization needs standardized processes. A good rule of thumb could be any organization that has more than, say, 10 people or more than a couple of locations where work happens. As we saw at Grandma Cakes, the moment a business grows to a size where one or a few individuals can’t personally do all the work, and depend on workers who are trained to do repetitive activities, it is a good idea to introduce standardized processes. By this definition, most small, medium, and large organizations, government and nonprofit organizations, and businesses in any industry need standardized processes.
The process map
In businesses that I worked with, we used a standard format to document processes. One format that I found especially useful was what we called a “four-sheeter”—simply because it has four sheets. If Grandma Cakes had used the four-sheeter format for documenting its cake-making processes, it would have looked somewhat like the one shown in figures 1 to 4. Of course, this is a simplified version shown for illustration purposes only (Grandma Doris would skin us alive if we revealed the full process to the public!).
The first sheet (see figure 1) is a high-level overview of the process. It does not contain every single step in the process but rather the key milestones. It also shows who the process owner is, what the output of the process is, how to measure if the output is accurate and timely (as promised to the customer), what inputs the process owner requires, who will supply these inputs, and so on. For example, in the cake-making process, we assume that there are five key steps or milestones—mixing the ingredients, kneading, baking, cooling, and packing.
Figure 1:here
The second sheet (see figure 2) is a graphical representation of the same process. Like the first sheet, it does not include every detailed step, but the flowchart format makes it easier for people to understand the overall process flow from start to end. While training people on how to do their jobs, we found the flowchart format useful to give them the big picture or an overview of the entire process, before going into more minute details about the process steps.
Figure 2:here
The third sheet (see figure 3) contains the process details. It includes every single step and substep in the process. For example, in cake-making, the first key step, mixing, actually has two substeps as shown in figure 3. The third sheet also describes interim outputs of key steps in the process. It identifies who the internal customer or recipient of each interim output is. (The recipient of an interim output is usually not the end-customer but a person or department within the organization itself.) For example, in cake-making, the output of mixing is mixed ingredients. The internal customer (recipient) of this output is the kneading department.
Figure 3:here
Here are a couple of examples from other businesses: The internal customer (recipient) of a yet-to-be-painted car body in an automobile plant is the paint department. Or the internal customer of a bank-loan application on which credit verification is to be done is the bank’s credit-verification department.
The third sheet also includes an important component of any process called “controls.” A control is a rule that helps ensure that a process or step in the process produces error-free (i.e., timely or accurate or both) output. At Grandma Cakes, the exact list of ingredients given by Grandma Doris is an example of a control. For your process to produce error-free output every time, your control must work every time. You should try and see if you can introduce poka-yoke (a Japanese term meaning “mistake-proofing”) to achieve this. Often, companies use technology to automate and mistake-proof their processes.
For example, Grandma Doris’ ever-popular cinnamon oatmeal cake must be baked at a particular temperature for an exact number of minutes. At Grandma Cakes’ factories, the ovens have temperature controls and built-in timers that automatically ensure there is no variation from the temperature and duration of baking. Our experience in businesses showed that there were many simple opportunities for mistake-proofing. Some of the best ideas for applying poka-yoke to a process came from the people who do that process. Some everyday examples of mistake-proofing are doors that will open only one way (to ensure that you don’t flatten the nose of the person on the other side) or a date-field on a data-entry screen that will only allow you to select a date from a calendar on the screen rather than type in the date.
The third sheet also describes in-process measures. For example, at Grandma Cakes factories, the target time to complete a batch of a particular variety of cake is 120 minutes end to end (output measure). This target for the output of the cake-making process can be achieved only if each step in the process is completed within the time allotted for that step. The number (or percent) of batches in a day or month where the target time of 120 minutes was met is an example of an output measure of the entire process. The number (or percent) of times where the target time for a particular step (say mixing or kneading) was met is an example of an in-process measure. The output measure (e.g., time taken to complete the full process and quality of output of the full process) is dependent on the in-process measures (the time taken to complete each interim step and quality of output of each interim step).
Finally, the fourth sheet (see figure 4) is a summary of the measures associated with that process. Most processes have (or should have) three types of performance measures—output measures, in-process measures, and input measures. We have already seen a brief explanation and examples of the first two types documented on the third sheet in figure 3. Input measures are quality and delivery requirements from suppliers for that process. For example, for Grandma Cakes to be able to meet its promised delivery time and quality to the stores that sell its cakes, it would, in turn, need to have measurable quality and delivery-time agreements with suppliers of ingredients.
Figure 4:here
Some businesses that I worked with had a total of 60 to 100 processes. Each one of these had a four-sheeter process document like the one shown in figures 1 to 4.
Do standardized processes kill innovation?
In part 2, we will look at some questions such as: Will standardized processes kill innovation? Who needs processes? Who should document your processes? How do you know if people are following the standard process? We will also look at the role of automation in the context of business processes.
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
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?
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