How to "do" Process Improvement

At FourThought Partners, we like to keep things as simple as possible. We've developed a methodology to process improvement that is straightforward and objective. The description that I'll provide here describes the basic steps, but leaves out the "secret sauce". That secret sauce is creativity, without which the steps do not produce results.

In other words, these steps are necessary, but not sufficient to produce profitable ideas. You need to assign the right person to lead such an effort, either from inside your organization, or from outside (i.e., FourThought Partners) -- then these steps will lead you to success.

STEP 1: Assess the Current Situation

Depending on the nature of the process to be improved (manufacturing, information processing, software, etc.), the nature of observing it will be different. In many cases, assessment begins with sitting next to people who actually perform the process. It is also helpful to meet with the managers and supervisors to get their perspective on what the process is and what is good or bad about it.

The output of this step is an appropriately detailed description of the current process, and an agreement from those involved that the description is accurate.

Step 2: Define Improvement Goals

It is critically important to define success before you go any further. Success should be defined clearly and as quantitatively as possible. For example, if the goal is to improve productivity, then that goal should be expressed in terms like "increase output from x per hour to 2x per hour of staff time, while not affecting quality as measured by customer satisfaction survey scores."

By stating the goals in this way, you will also establish metrics by which current and future performance can be evaluated. If these metrics are not already reported on by the current process, then these reports should be added immediately, even if it entails manually collecting data and computing these metrics on a periodic basis.

Step 3: Establish an Operational Advisory Team

Organize a small team of knowledgable people who can bring real world experience to the improvement exercise. They may not have to devote a great deal of time to this, but they must be available to vett ideas and suggest improvements of their own.

Step 4: Propose Improvement Ideas, "Socialize" them, and Iterate

The creative people on the team must now apply the secret sauce and develop a list of specific actions that could be taken to meet the improvement goals. As these will not be right the first time, the ideas must be discussed with the operational team, feedback must be incorporated, the list modified, and the process repeated until the team agrees that they have developed a good list of ideas.

Step 5: Prioritize the Ideas

Keeping it simple, assign several dimensions of "quality" to each idea. These dimensions could be a) gut feel priority, b) H/M/L level of difficulty, c) H/M/L impact on quality, etc. Once values for each dimension are assigned to each idea, the priority sort of the list should be fairly simple to perform.

Step 6: Get Management Buy-in

Review the prioritized list with management and allow them to further edit the list and re-sort it. Get resources assigned to each initiative that you want to implement, and most importantly, assign one person to be accountable for each effort.

Step 7: Start Improving

Establish the baseline metrics for the improvement measure, develop a project plan, and begin improving the process.

Step 8: Measure Improvement until the project is declared Complete

Using the metrics for measuring improvement, report regularly on the change in those metrics. Be prepared to explain to management why the metrics are or are not changing and regularly re-forecast those metrics. You will know that you have been successful when the chosen metrics have reached acceptable levels.

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FourThought Partners has performed this process many times with great success. There isn't a process in existence that can't be improved. All that is required is some focus, a committed team, and a creative leader.