JMH Consulting

Process Improvement is a series of actions taken by the Process Owner(s) to identify, analyze and improve existing processes within an organisation to meet existing or new goals and objectives. These actions often follow a specific methodology or strategy which includes but is not limited to the following:-

Benchmarking, is the process of comparing the business processes and performance metrics including cost, cycle time, productivity, or quality to another that is widely considered to be an industry standard benchmark or best practice, can also be referred to as "best practice benchmarking" or "process benchmarking".

Business Process Improvement, this is a systematic approach to assist organisations optimise underlying processes to achieve more efficient results.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR), business process reengineering is also known as BPR, Business Process Redesign, Business Transformation, or Business Process Change Management. Reengineering is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality, speed and service. BPR combines a strategy of promoting business innovation with a strategy of making major improvements to business processes so that a company can become a much stronger and more successful competitor in the marketplace.

Capability Maturity Model Integration - Capability Maturity Model (CMMi), CMMi is a process improvement approach that provides organisations with the essential elements of effective processes that ultimately improve their performance. CMMI can be used to guide process improvement across a project, a division, or an entire organisation. It helps integrate traditionally separate organisational departments, sets process improvement goals and priorities, provides guidance for quality processes, and provides a point of reference for appraising current processes. CMMI in software engineering and organisational development is a trademarked process improvement approach that provides a company with the essential elements for effective process improvement. It can be used to guide process improvement across a project, a division, or an entire organisation.

ISO 9000 is a family of standards for quality management systems. ISO 9000 is maintained by ISO, the International Organisation for Standardisation and is administered by accreditation and certification bodies. The rules are regularly updated, as requirements and legislation changes.

Just In Time Manufacturing (JIT) is an inventory strategy that strives to improve a business's return on investment by reducing in-process inventory any associated carrying costs. To meet JIT objectives, the process relies on signals between different points in the process, which tells production when to make the next part. Kanban are usually 'tickets' but can be simple visual signals, such as the presence or absence of a part on a shelf. Implemented correctly, JIT can dramatically improve a manufacturing organisation's return on investment, quality, and efficiency.

Lean Manufacturing or Lean Production, is often known simply as "Lean", is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and as thus should be a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or service, "value" is defined as any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for. Basically, lean is cantered around creating increased value with less work. Lean manufacturing is a generic process management philosophy derived mostly from the Toyota Production System (TPS) in the 1990’s

Process Management is the ensemble of activities of planning and monitoring the performance of a process. Especially in the sense of business process, is often confused with reengineering. Sometimes, process management includes reengineering or reengineering includes process management.

Process Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, techniques and systems to define, visualise, measure, control, report and improve processes aimed to meet customer requirements profitably. Some people believe that it is different from program management in that program management is concerned with managing a group of inter-dependent projects. But from another view point, process management includes program management.

Process Improvement and Management (PI&M), to be able to make the necessary changes in an organisation, you need to understand the key processes of the company being:-

I. Identify the process to be improved

II. Develop the objective(s)

III. Select the members to make up a cross-functional team

IV. Document the current “AS IS” process

V. Identify any "disconnects" in the process

VI. Make recommendations for change

VII. Establish new “TO BE” processes

VIII. Implement and monitor change(s)

Six Sigma is a business management strategy originally developed by Motorola and enjoys widespread application in many sectors of industry, although its application is not without controversy.

Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and variability in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organisation ("Black Belt", "Green Belt", "Yellow Belt"etc.) who are experts in these methods. Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organisation follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified financial targets (based on cost reduction and profit increase).

The DMAIC project methodology is probably the most well known and has five phases:-

I. Define high-level project goals and the current process, the “AS IS”

II. Measure key aspects of the current process and collect relevant data

III. Analyse the data to verify cause-and-effect relationships. Determine what the relationships are, and attempt to ensure that all factors have been considered

IV. Improve or optimise the process based upon data analysis using techniques like Design of experiments, the “TO BE”

V. Control to ensure that any deviations from target are corrected before they result in defects. Set up pilot runs to establish and prove process capability, then move on to production, set up the control mechanisms and continuously monitor the process.