Process Improvement on the Road to Operational Excellence

Burcu Yaraman, Business Development Manager

Operational Excellence means keeping operational activities under control from a continuous improvement perspective in order to support an organization's controlled growth. Processes that focus on efficiency and effectiveness, create value for the customer and support continuous improvement are therefore critical components in achieving operational excellence.

Points to consider on the road to Operational Excellence:

. Process owners who have embraced the company strategy and have the right perspective and competencies should be appointed as responsible for managing and developing each operational process
. Under the leadership of process owners:

. Operational business processes should be designed with a focus on efficiency and effectiveness so they best support the delivery of products and services that add value for the customer

. The performance of operational processes in real-life use should be monitored, improvement opportunities aligned with strategic goals should be identified, and the necessary redesign work should be planned

Process Improvement is the cycle of iterative adjustments made on the road to Operational Excellence. The need for these adjustments may be identified through process performance monitoring, or it may arise from an internal organizational change or from corporate change initiatives driven by strategic decisions. Because such scenarios occur constantly, Process Improvement is a chain of activities that should always be on companies' agenda.

The following steps can be followed to support end-to-end continuous improvement:

STEP 1

. Processes that need priority improvement are identified,
. Internal agreement is reached on process improvement priorities;

STEP 2

. The current operation of the selected processes is documented,
. Work is planned to identify bottlenecks and problems;

STEP 3

. Process improvement solutions are developed to solve the identified issues,
. Revised process scenarios are created based on the improvement solutions,
. The return on investment and ease/cost of implementation of each revised process scenario are determined,
. One of the revised process scenarios is selected;

STEP 4

. The project tasks and schedule needed to implement the selected process scenario are defined,
. Ownership of these project tasks within the company is determined and the necessary assignments are made,
. Until the project goes live, task progress is tracked against the schedule;

STEP 5

. After the project goes live, the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) associated with the processes are tracked and the extent to which the expected benefit has been achieved is reported.

PaperWork WORKFLOW

Designing processes on PaperWork Workflow, an efficiency tool, makes managing processes, measuring them and reviewing them based on those measurements easier in ways that create a competitive advantage. It plays an active role in improving processes to reduce costs and in raising service quality to gain a competitive edge.

PaperWork Workflow:

. Moves the flow of information and documents into the electronic environment, making all circulation traceable and controllable,
. Increases efficiency through process automation and optimized resource use,
. Shortens decision-making and approval times,
. Reduces operational costs,
. Helps reduce processing errors and delays by recording and controlling them,
. Makes it easier to track and manage work and resources,
. Helps identify problems in processes.

Sources

https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/process-improvement
https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/process-optimization
https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/business-process-management