You're struggling to streamline a process. How can you pinpoint inefficiencies and boost productivity?

Mapping out your process is the keystone to operational excellence. As a Six Sigma Green Belt and process improvement analyst in financial services, I've seen how transformative a detailed process map can be. Without it, every step is a guess. With a map, the fog lifts, revealing the landscape: overlapping trails, slow streams of tasks, and complex thickets. This tool uncovers hidden inefficiencies and redundancies. It spots bottlenecks, reduces costs, and simplifies workflows for employees and members. A comprehensive map guides targeted improvements, empowers tough questions, measures impacts, and engages teams, ensuring lasting productivity and efficiency.

Streamlining a process and boosting productivity involves careful analysis and strategic improvements. Here's a step-by-step approach to pinpoint inefficiencies and enhance efficiency: 1) Map the current process to visualize each step. 2) Gather team feedback to identify pain points. 3) Analyze data for trends and bottlenecks. 4) Eliminate redundant steps and simplify tasks. 5) Standardize procedures with templates and guidelines. 6) Leverage technology, such as automation tools. 7) Set clear goals and KPIs to monitor progress. 8) Train and empower employees to suggest improvements. 9) Implement changes incrementally. 10) Review regularly for continuous enhancement.

Few keywords that one can search for to complete "Map it Out": Value Stream Mapping, As-Is Process Map, TIMWOOD. These 3 tools could easily help to identify all discrepancy, and inefficiency.

Struggling to streamline a process? Start by mapping out the entire workflow to visualize each step and identify bottlenecks. Engage your team for insights on pain points—they know where delays happen. Analyze data to spot patterns, focusing on high-impact areas where small changes can yield big results. Implement incremental adjustments rather than overhauling everything at once, allowing you to test and refine. Leverage technology to automate repetitive tasks and enhance efficiency. Finally, monitor progress and foster a culture of continuous improvement to keep productivity high and processes smooth.

By applying lean principles , Six sigma & QMS approach such as continuous improvement (Kaizen), value stream mapping, and just-in-time production, organizations can systematically analyze their workflows to pinpoint inefficiencies. This approach reduces unnecessary steps, improves process flow, and optimizes resource use. Doing internal audits and inspection help to monitor and control on business processes and procedures. Through the internal audits we can collect the data where we can find out what are gaps and potential risk in the process .

When analyzing processes (especially complex or multiuser ones) it's often tempting to jump right into solutions; eliminating steps and costs, digitizing or reducing wait times and delays. However it's critical to appreciate the origin, intention and rational for each step. While end-users may not be the experts on what is most efficient or how to maximize productivity, they are an invaluable source of context, to qualify/ nullify what the data seems to be saying. Data and observations don't always tell the full story. For eg. Organizational culture and Customer Value are often best understood by simply stopping to ask..."why." Those responses often lead to other questions but ultimately result in better solutions.

Preguntar “por que” debe suceder dentro de la actividad de analisis de mapeo de proceso o análisis de tareas. Un “por que” sin conocer las actividades sin valor sobre las que profundizar en el “por que” no aporta valor, es lo mismo que tratar “eliminar moscas co una escopeta”, dispararemo mucho pero no mataremos nada. Por tanto, primero toca detectar actividades sin valor, sea mapeando procesos o sea mediante shadowing, y a posteriori, determinar que causa el no valor de estas actividades.

At a previous workplace, we used to put summaries of neighbour submissions into the computer system for the customer service officers and planners. After a couple system changes, I then asked if anyone was actually reading those summaries. They weren't, because our records system had been upgraded in the meantime and they could now read the whole document there instead. So we stopped doing the summaries. Wish I'd thought to ask that sooner!

Lean manufacturing provides a high-practice framework that favors identifying the points to optimize or control in a process, mainly because it is a change of mentality towards the flow of value, each step of the process can be evaluated from a perspective that only considers those activities that provide added value as estimable. In such a way, it is essential to translate optimization into a measurable indicator, a reliable statistic or any analysis that allows quantifying the quality achieved with the implemented improvement, in order to be able to translate its understanding into something real that can be monitored continuously and perfected.

Medir no es acción de mejora de procesos si no un paso necesario para demostrar esa mejora y ser capaces de justificar que la versión ToBe es mas eficiente que la AsIs.

Analizar cómo impacta cada fase del proceso en el resultado final, identificar que aporta valor y que no para poder tomar decisiones. Determinar que se puede dejar de hacer y que hay que impulsar. Involucrar a los equipos, a las personas que llevan a cabo los procesos para hacer un buen análisis es imprescindible.

Escuchar al equipo es imprescindible para tomar decisiones precisas. Participar a las personas contribuye a por un lado a tomar buenas decisiones y por otro al desempe?o del equipo. Personas implicadas aportarán más y obtendrán mejores resultados.

Un conocimiento profundo de las personas sobre las cuales los cambios impactarán ayuda a identificar los “early adopters” tan necesarios en un proceso cambio, implicarlos ayudará a aquellos que son reticentes a los cambios y les facilitará el camino. Peque?os logros poco a poco generará cambios más sólidos.

Si entendemos las ganancias como “ganancias exonómicas” unicamente, es falso. A veces las ganancias pueden ser en términos de tiempo de persona, pueden ser en términos de facilidades para la persona… ganancias que, por cierto, son siempre complejas de calcular, medir y demostrar objetivamente.