Life is seldom a single process. They are a collection of processes which interact with each other. Organizations have Quality Management System (QMS) which ideally should be the blue-print/ operating manual of the organizational engine. Look for the following:
- Are all the critical processes that run (in) your company covered. If not, define
- Are all the critical processes required by Quality Models adopted by the company addressed. If not, define
- Obsolete processes are removed/ retired e.g. Periodic Special Review by a Special officer, where the position was abolished many years back
- Processes which have evolved but QMS is lagging behind e.g. a form to be submitted to a certain department requesting something but which is now an automated process. Revise
- Processes which are theoretically ‘Expected’ to be in place but practically restricted to shelf without much implementation e.g. a process launched recently but adoption declined over time. Here measuring and reporting the adoption of key processes can help keep them alive
But quite frequent and interesting are "Disconnected Processes" which happen because of random processes being dumped into QMS without Compatibility or interaction checks. for e.g.,
- Outputs for Gods: Are all the Outputs of processes consumed by a user/ or another process?
- God-given Inputs: Is the origin of all the inputs of processes defined? Origin can be external e.g. a requirement document provided by customer
Here is where, having a Process Owner (or champion) can help. Many companies have a champion who periodically reviews the relevance, implementation, performance etc. of these processes and keeps the blue-print alive. Adopting Quality Models like ISO 9001 will automatically necessitate this.
With all the above, you may have a well-defined process/ QMS, but unless the processes are understood, accepted and implemented by practitioners they can't deliver the expected value. So the next step is promote adoption.
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