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Reengineering: 40 U $ eful Tips
This paper is available on our website: proaction – Generating Best Practices. This is an excerpt of a document originally written by George Miller, founder of proaction. It has been amended and updated by Paul Deis, proaction CEO.
Introduction
Business Process Reengineering (BPR) principles have been around for a long time, slowly and under other labels. In recent years they started coming together as a discipline, incorporating world class business principles and focus on the gradual improvement of the improvements quantum-not only continues.
There is still much confusion and controversy over just what is BPR. For example, some people equate with reductions BPR staffing and layoffs. For others it is synonymous with computer systems. It is neither. BPR concepts are still being developed and are undergoing change. Due to some problems initial application and new buzzwords in reptiles, the term "Process Improvement" is being used increasingly.
BPR is the total or partial "reinventing" of how to make business processes to achieve further performance improvement. It also questions the assumptions and underlying principles, including Why, why, by whom, and even if things need to be made.
This presentation will help in finding and helping to clarify a number of principles important, plus some useful knowledge, techniques and tips – 40 in total!
Basics
1. Start with clean sheet of paper, mission, vision
Some people argue for "Nuking" the old system and start from scratch. To some extent, we agree. Approach is needed as fresh as possible and I will not be an undue burden on the paradigms of the past in the design of future improvements. It is also necessary to learn from mistakes and the victories of the past. However, "the powers that be" simply can not allow a fresh start, at least until some credibility has been established for the approach and equipment. Experience has shown that it is often best to apply new software tools such as the first and worry about the major re-engineering later. This, of course, requires a flexible software.
It's probably best to start with an initial high-level analysis, and then concentrating on a small number process initially.
We recommend a five-step approach to design:
• Make a list of what you like and do not like the current system, what you would like to view. Please consult the owners of the other "process, users, customers, suppliers, accountants, whatever. Then place it aside for a while.
• Look at the alternatives, learn about what else is available, reference, etc. Read books, attend seminars, courses, read the reports / stories of success, making pilgrimages to the holy places of success. Talk to people with experience.
• Brainstorm about. Agreement on the mission, vision and focus. Establish an overall improvement objectives. Identify non-value added activities.
• Next, the construction an abbreviation, "as is" process map to determine what is happening now, and where waste and delays occur. Use this to better understand the process, generate lists of issues and improvements more specific goal than the previous steps.
• Build a "be" process model proposed including flowcharts, organization, forms, procedures, etc, before moving to implementation.
2. "Reinventing" how the business aims not only to make incremental changes, not automate the mess you already have
If you are not careful, the new process becomes simply a gradual process improvement of age or, worse, an automated version of the old. If possible, find a whole new, much better to run the business or carry out the process.
It is very important to achieve a critical mass of new ideas, so the company is not merely to take the path of least resistance back to the old ways. There is a invisible force that tries to make almost every change effort springs back to the way it was done before. Find the forces of reaction and deal with them soon. Put enough people with the right beliefs, experience and training in key positions to help effect change. Of course, the old way might actually be the best way, but such cases are a very small minority.
3. Customer-oriented, anticipating customer needs, y. . .
4. Involve customers beginning of the process
Ask clients / prospects you want. Ask before you say what you do not like or even worse, go elsewhere. This is weird and frightening to many internal employees who would not know a customer if you were bitten by one. Take employees to meet customers or clients to meet with employees. Make talking on the phone, exchanging views. Generally, improvement on both sides and valuable forms bonds. Involving customers early in the process of building "ownership" and to avoid failed attempts.
Find out what your competitors are doing with success and see if it makes sense. Do not slavishly copy what-hop. Can not be now better ideas or new technologies that could be used. Try looking at how companies in other industries to solve similar problems. For example, a parts supplier aircraft made great improvements in the first place the study of LL Bean, the renowned supplier of outdoor goods.
Better yet, think of something that nobody has thought yet. Overnight delivery of air packages, disposable razors, and glasses in an hour, were all breakthrough ideas that made fortunes and excited customers.
Do this before you make expensive BPR program without sufficient improvement criteria.
5. Achieve continuous, rapid improvement of progressive improvement, can not be enough
The Japanese Kaizen, or continuous improvement philosophy, is an extremely powerful concept, and has taken, and others that the way effective, a long way. But if you're ten years behind, Kaizen or even maintain the same gap. medicine with greater firmness. Process Reengineering may be a tonic, to enable great leaps forward, and may be used in conjunction with Kaizen. Even if within ten years late, perhaps BPR can be a way to get ten years ahead.
How can one jump to another company soon to be more successful? … making the accelerator pedal instead of whips. When you do something not only better, but different from truth.
6. Challenge existing approach
Start with a course in the back of your mind that old way-can greatly improve the chances are with you. Allow yourself to be wrong in some areas, but do not count on it. This requires more critical thinking. Compare the results of the current process in its ideal mission statement and note the differences. Then, think of how it can be improved considerably.
It is hard for people to challenge existing approaches, unless:
• Eliminate any threats to them to do so. This can be done better, showing which company people can do it and survive. Ensure that people are rewarded, not punished for improvements. One company found was in the habit of dismissing members team after improvements were made. A real motivation.
• Expose the equipment to alternative models for doing business. This can be achieved through education, site visits, reading, participation in professional societies and discussion groups.
• Assign management or lead the charge to yourself, "lead by example to challenge the status quo and seeking better ideas. Encourage others to do the same.
7. Use benchmarking, get ideas from other sectors
No need to be completely original in their thinking. Discover what "best practices" are in his and other industries with transferable concepts. Likely even collaborate with other companies in the development of better processes (void where prohibited by law).
8. Define product / process relationships, avoid functional "Silos"
Try not to take into account the existing organizational structure in developing the ideal process. Look to the objectives to be carried out processes that are necessary to support it, and finally, resources (including the organization) needed to carry them out.
9. Set a hierarchy: customer, product, process, function, activity
The following table shows some important relationships:
Objectives
10. Compress time
Faster is almost always better, if done well. More speed means more cycles, which means increased production per unit time, faster, which usually improves service and reduces costs. Just try to accelerate the existing process, however, may actually increase costs and cause quality problems. This is why the "old school" people often say that going to cost more, the pain of other priorities, or reduce the quality if your application to do something faster is granted.
11. Eliminate bottlenecks
Find the slowest activity in a process. Speed it up. This speeds up the process and often the cheapest way to do it.
12. Reduce the number of steps, complexity, levels, people
The most exciting part is that anything – a machine, system, process – the more difficult, more can go wrong, and the more It takes time. Reduce the number of steps, operations, people, parts, and improve performance.
13. Reduce defects
Most processes much longer and cost more due to defects and exception handling. The defects are the worst form of waste. Generally, the activities of the force more than expensive to correct, slow cycle times, the ability to steal, and the strength of increased capital investment (for inventory, space, equipment, capital work). It has been said that the defects cause 5 to 10 times its apparent cost.
14. Increases flexibility
Be adaptable to changes allows the introduction of new products, services, processes, programs. Try to visualize the parameters of a possible change in the design process. Increasing the flexibility of people use adaptable training and process design to accommodate future changes.
Philosophies
15. Empowering people, but with a strong leadership, clear mission and beliefs
Empowerment does not mean abdication of management leadership, but also to provide employees of the address skills, authority, and the tools they need to accept delegated much responsibility as possible. However, even in this era of the contrary "devices Self-directed work, there is still a great need for leadership. A lot of it has to come from management and other team members. One can not overemphasize the value of enthusiasm, strong leadership, informed energy to a reengineering effort. People tend to respond very positively to this.
16. Making education a way of life
There are only so many new things to learn social, technical, philosophical, specifics, that some important employee needs time to be dedicated to education and training. This is not just an expense if used wisely, but an excellent investment in the company future. There must be a comprehensive education plan. Employees have to be the task of the objectives of education, and testing improvements. When you refer someone to a seminar 3 days in reducing design, development objectives set in advance for this investment of time and money. This is not a paid vacation day 3. Interrogation of the employee after-make sure the company gets a return on this investment. If not, know why. Employees who consistently not to obtain results that are bound to be candidates for the upcoming educational opportunities.
17. A "system" consists of missions leadership, goals, targets, indicators, policies, procedures, education, training, organization, personnel, no tools, primarily a project team
Address all ingredients system shown above to redesign a business system and its processes.
18. "Ownership" is important
Better to have a mediocre even approach that has the consensus and support the best idea in the world that nobody likes or understands. The first, at least at work in a mediocre.
Building ownership through the participation of people in the new approach to their intelligence and egos intertwined with it. For example, a defense contractor client engaged in a process engineering involved in designing government auditor. It really became the focus again and looked with good eyes, which did not hurt a bit from our customers.
We've found that after repeated exposure to a good concept, along with participation, people tend to take ownership of a process. Reinforce this with praise and other rewards.
Approaches
19. Focus on eliminating non-value added activities / assets / expenses
Dispose of waste in the company. Decrease the amount of nonperforming assets. Shingo use of "seven wastes Production "as a tool to help identify waste. The waste is another thing that is not absolutely essential to design, produce and get the product / Customer service. Employing techniques of some of the different analysis to help identify and weigh waste improvement priorities.
20. Using simple approaches, no complex sophistication
There are already dozens of new, complex methodologies, software packages, etc., intended as "magic bullets" for Reengineering your business. Most of them are too complicated and generate more money for suppliers than for you. Do not spend more time learning and playing with the tools to solve business problems. Take special care with complex matrices and mathematical models. There is much more complex deployment of a moderate role quality (DFC) of the matrix.
The key is to understand the requirements of the process, and what is wrong with the existing process, and what tools and resources are available / needed to do the job. Then, design or improve the new / revised process.
21. Decentralize, unless there are compelling reasons to something else
Delegate to the floor and move resources to forward positions which could be used for more rapid and flexible customer service. Go back and consolidate on there are compelling reasons to do so due to economies of scale, critical resources. Make sure this service does not compromise quality or flexibility.
22. Streamline, simplify, automate, integrate, in that order
Do not spend much money on automation until you know what is the automation and there is a simplified approach to running the business. Often, the simplification of the current system can pay part or all of the further automation. Take all the effort before automating anything. The automation and integration should be the logical culmination of a well thought out plan.
23. Use the conference room pilot approach
Despite the best efforts of all processes that can still be complex. Therefore, it is extremely important to have tools to perform testing, refining, and training to ensure the best results with minimum risk. The conference room pilot approach is a tool, and construction works testing outside the network line, manually and proposed operating equipment / software systems prior to live implementation. Mistakes are made, and education / Training occur in the conference room, not in the heat of battle in the office or factory floor. Leadership Project uses mission statements, objectives, and lists of questions to design test scenarios, and leads the group through these for training, debugging and troubleshooting purposes.
Techniques
24. Selectively apply policies, procedures, checkpoints, control, accountability, figures
No more and no rule generates paperwork needed. Well-educated people with clear missions need less of this. When it is not enough, well written and policies simple often provide adequate guidance. When this is not enough, you may need to add specific procedures. Install control points, records, controls, only when you really need to gain control of a difficult situation.
Have clear lines of accountability. Liability only can occur when there is authority, responsibility and resources to do the job.
Use a small number of simple, linked to the mission, goals and objectives. Communicate the results and take corrective actions if necessary.
25. Use the "discontinuous thinking" techniques
Some people try to make us believe that inductive thinking, rational is the best way to redesign a process. Not necessarily. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, which funded the Nobel Prize, mostly by accident. Federal Express is based on an idea of the transfer of federal funds overnight bank. brainstorming sessions ideas can take half or unrelated and transform them into powerful and creative concepts change.
Use the clients, consultants, the stranger, the games, their spouse, whatever help you generate ideas that break the boundaries of the current approach.
26. Lead Insiders, outsiders increase
The use of outside, such as consultants and educators to teach his people, provide a temporary boost, and skills needed sporadically. Building the kernel the direction and ownership of permanent resources internally when required. Think of outsiders as "jumper cables."
27. Teams small, but with a "guide hand"
The ideal team size seems to be 3-8. More difficult to handle is-a "committee" less, it is more difficult to achieve critical mass. If you need others to help reach a consensus, provide technical advice, etc, bring them in as necessary, as "consultants." For example, if you are re-engineering the purchase requisition process, they have all 117 people who write, process and approve these in the design team. Assemble a small team of the best and brightest. Do you consult some of the others, and ultimately review or u provide write-ups of the proposed changes to others for advice and consent.
Do not assume that teams will be managing yourself, especially if have a history of doing so. At a minimum, even very good teams benefit from help with the key parameters, such as mission, objectives, metrics. Less competent teams may need help with their own process of achieving things, and the technical assistance area. Seeding teams with players on the team trained is useful.
28. Develop common processes, which makes sense, "At a minimum, reach the common data attributes, the macro processes, data conventions exchange, etc.
29. Bias toward "vanilla" approaches where feasible,
Do not reinvent the wheel. Using packaged software, and approaches standardized. When you have to invent a new one, just do it if it really will provide competitive differentiation profitably. Even then, try multi-purpose design, flexibility and reusability.
30. Leverage the investment, people, resources
Building means doing more with less. Do not invest when you can use: inventory from, well-planned automation, human resource development, education, Virtual enterprises, cooperation resources, versatile people, contractors, OPM (other peoples money), OPI (ideas of others), technology and methodologies license.
31. Ambitious set "stretch" targets. Do not worry if you lose. Concern about the amount of improvement is made
Many organizations intimidate the people in the development of overly conservative goals, reducing the perceived probability of failure. Try to eliminate the fear of failure (Easier said than done), and encourage employees to shoot to the moon. Then help them get the resources they need to achieve these objectives, promote controlled, conscious risk-taking, the success of the reward, and honest error console that occur as a result of hard work. It is usually best to achieve half the improvement goal of 50% of all sites within a target of 10%.
32. Project leaders should lead, not make all decisions
The project ideal leader is one who can formulate and communicate a mission to inspire, provide tools needed by team members, participate with members team to identify and target the opportunities and challenges for action.
33. Avoid "analysis paralysis." You will never have all the facts
One of our partners leading a program to reduce customer inventory. Some of its employees regretted the fact that up to half of points that could be traced lack of adequate data decision, so they felt they could not continue. He said, "then work in the other half!" We still are waiting for all the data right before making a decision if we hesitated. Instead, improvements are being made daily.
34. Do not use only functional organizations to define processes, which tend to reproduce existing paradigms
Do not tolerate that the processes designed to meet current organizational structure, or even specific people. Using cross-functional teams, with strangers, internal and external customers and suppliers processes.
35. the implementation phase to reduce risk and maximize gains rate benefits
Complete reengineering of the company may take a long time. Most companies can not / will not wait for that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it is necessary to provide recovery at regular intervals, preferably from soon. Create a phased implementation plan that allows the general effort to self-fund itself before completion, if possible. Individual processes can have early dates maturity.
36. Use cell work and self-directed teams
Stay away from functional organization. Organize processes. Cells for generally designed to manage a process, product, or product line. Establishing the organization to serve the customer, mission, product, process – In that order.
37. Avoid the construction of a new bureaucracy / reengineering theocracy high priests / priestesses
It seems only a matter of time after a new concept, such as TQM, MIS, etc, comes before a body of technocrats arrogant materializes, dropping acronyms, rules, regulations, forms and methodologies. Reengineering is proving to be an exception to this. Do not let them gain a foothold. Make sure BPR stays with the people, by holding of those responsible, the organization accordingly, and provide the necessary resources.
38. The use of flow charts, dictionaries, business rules, to define the system to avoid long and technical prose-Results of the documentation should be suitable for training, audit and reference desk
Define its system of simple statements, letters paintings, tables, and if necessary, algorithms. If these can not be used for training purposes, consider rip and start again, until you can. People should be able to use to help do their jobs.
39. Keep lists love riding issues status
Questions BPR actually a unit of the project. Follow all the suggestions, disputes, problems, management guidance. Keep in "lists of issues." Sort, group and prioritize them. Develop and suggests approaches to request these. Use these lists to guide the BPR project, and make resolution monitoring and enforcement.
40. The new process designs will win by default if not disputed by the deadline
A process corporate and bureaucratic approval moving at snail's pace swallows over ideas, innovation and enthusiasm. Consider radical changes to his. Use the trick book club. " Some book clubs will automatically send the books and bill you for them, unless you object or specify different books.
Your company could use this idea too. Post suggests approaches, perhaps as part of the playlist. If nobody objects or comes up with better ideas, suggestions that are automatically assigned to be developed and implemented.
41. Use the flow chart approach to living systems models
We thought the best approaches to document as-is and to-be system configurations, and developed the following conclusions:
• KIS (Keep It Simple). The more complex methodologies to confuse and intimidate the very people who most need to involve. The tools can bog down the effort, and quickly lead to yields reduced.
• The people refrain from making changes to more complex models, due to the enormous amount of construction and maintenance of tools more complex modeling.
• simple methods are more likely to be used and bear fruit more quickly.
• People think better in the graphic or pictorial format. Graph of the process of using real images of documents or forms, screens, reports, etc. registration problems, the events of defects, delays, contradictions, cycle times, responsibilities, policy or procedure references directly from the charts.
• Go to the level that people understand the process.
• Start with company-level and summary level process charts. Make a mission statement for each process and sub-process before you go into the details.
• Use the tables as a diagnostic tool and design. Identify and correct activities that do not generate no added value, bottlenecks, delay defect and produce points, organizational, gaps, overlaps, etc.
42. Delivers more than you promise.
42 of the 40 tracks promised not bad.
About the Author
George J. Miller, CFPIM, is Founder of PROACTION. Prior to selling the company to Paul Deis, George had worked with dozens of companies in assignments involving productivity, quality and service improvement, business systems, change management, acquisitions, divestitures, expert witness testimony, and others. Prior to founding PROACTION in 1986, he was Vice President of Marketing for Western Data Systems; Director of Planning and Development and Assistant Director—Operations for Purolator Technologies (PTI); Consultant for Booz-Allen & Hamilton, and Manufacturing Systems Manager for Becton-Dickinson.
Paul Deis, CFPIM, is CEO, PROACTION. He brings over 25 years of consulting and senior executive experience to his work, including detailed work with nearly 60 companies. Prior to acquiring PROACTION, Paul’s experience includes running a small ERP software company, leading other consulting businesses, prior work with PROACTION, Manager at Deloitte & Touche, VP Manufacturing at Raypak, Inc., where he was very successful with an early Lean management initiative, and dozens of projects in the areas of enterprise software, operations management, crisis resolutions, in a wide variety of industries, business types, and scales. Our website: PROACTION – Generating Best Practices
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