Process-related definitions Simplified

Process Management terms and definitions:

As a professional who works in Quality Management Systems, each day I encounter cases of hopeless managers who are struggling because of the efficiencies and inconsistent quality of the outcomes.

I always start to address the issue by saying: “Everything is a process, and that is where you can start looking for solutions”.

A process by definition is "an activity or set of activities that use resources to transform inputs into outputs”- ISO 9001.

Which is basically everything we do.

It is a profound mind shift to adopt a process approach, but if you look around you can see it everywhere, from making a cup of tea to the production of a Bugatti car, or the delivery service or even movie-making. In fact, your brain now is PROCESSING these words you are reading and the outcome is your understanding and then your action of pressing the like button or the unfollow button (hoping not the latter option!!)

It is very important to adopt the process approach especially in this era of collapsing ecological systems, rare and expensive resources, and increasing competition. Therefore, every single business owner needs to manage their processes in the best way possible ensuring maximum outcomes quality, and minimum wastage.

But for a non-specialized, it is a bit confusing when someone gets introduced to the realm of Business Process Management because of the so many terms used with processes, so here I am trying to save you some time and explain each one of them briefly:

Business Process Management: (BPM)

This is the highest level term in the whole group and it contains all the other ones and the definition itself is telling:

“BPM is a discipline in operations management in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes”

Process Modeling:

It is a higher level of documentation. Processes are always there whether documented or not (because everything is a process, remember?!) However, it may be in the employees’ heads or narratively written or it can be visualized using a defined and agreed-upon notations that other people can read and understand.

The definition:

“Process modeling is the activity of representing processes of an enterprise, so that the current process may be analyzed, improved, and automated.”

Process Automation,

Starting where we left off, Automation is the use of technology in order to simplify the process and eliminate human error.

However, Automation is the ultimate goal that needs a strong base of a simple and streamlined process.

Process Analysis:

Even if the process is not visually modeled, you can still analyze it and gain an understating of what is going on in order to use the results of your analysis in further actions such as improvement/optimization.

The definition:

Process analysis is the act of conducting a review and gaining an understanding of business processes. It involves reviewing the components of a process, including inputs, outputs, procedures, controls, actors, applications, data, technologies, and their interactions to produce results.

The analysis includes the evaluation of time, cost, capacity, and quality of processes, being able to use static or dynamic visual models of the process, data collection from the beginning to the end of activities, analysis of value chain, end-to-end modeling, and functional decomposition.

Process Measurement:

Simply put, you cannot analyze a process without it being put in place and have at least completed a full cycle (outputs got out!). Measuring a process means that you go and get data about what happened while applying the process in practice and then you measure the time, efforts, money, resources that were used in each activity.

Definition:

The technique or process used to obtain data describing the factors of a process or the quality of the output of the process. Measurement methods must be documented s part of a process improvement initiative, in order to ensure that measurements of improvements to a process are accurate.

Process Improvement:

So as you must have concluded, the goal of the analysis and the measurement is to improve the process. It is one of the ISO 9001 principles that your organization has an evidence-based decision making, thus the decision of applying this or that modification to the process needs to be backed with data and measurements.

The improvement of the process Must be an ongoing process and not upon once-in-a-blue-moon basis reviews.

The definition:

Process improvement is the ongoing process of identifying, analyzing, and improving current processes within an organization, ensuring your business is operating at optimal levels to meet standards, quality benchmarks, and quotas. 

Business Process Reengineering:

BPR is applied to processes that require a major overhaul, like completely redesigning a process to achieve dramatic results. Therefore, the change is profound and might affect each and every activity in the process.

You need to know that Reengineering one of your processes Will Definitely affect other processes in your organization.

Process optimization:

This is used when you have parameters and constraints but you only can play with the parameters and not with the constraints. So it only achieves a minor enhancement to the overall efficiency of the process.

As you are wondering, the difference from Process Improvement is that in the improvement you can break through constraints but in Optimization, you cannot.

When optimizing a process, the goal is to maximize one or more of the process specifications, while keeping all others within their constraints such as discovering the critical activities and bottlenecks and acting only on them.

Definition:

It is the discipline of adjusting a process so as to optimize (make the best or most effective use of) some specified set of parameters without violating some constraints. 

Process Mining:

Back to the analysis part, mining is one of the analysis techniques to get data.

Definition:

Process mining is a family of techniques in the field of process management that support the analysis of business processes based on event logs. During process mining, specialized data mining algorithms are applied to event log data in order to identify trends, patterns, and details contained in event logs recorded by an information system. Process mining aims to improve process efficiency and understanding of processes.

Process Control:

It mostly focuses on the environment and the conditions of an automated process.

The definition:

Process control is used in continuous production – in manufacturing and in other fields and industries where some kind of material is produced without any kind of interruption – as well as in “batch processing.” It’s used to automatically control the conditions in which a product is made – ensuring better quality and efficiency.

Process Maturity:

Not all processes are as mature, as we said some processes are not documented and some are not controlled while many processes are not measured.

Definition:

Process maturity is an indication of how close a developing process is to being complete and capable of continual improvement through qualitative measures and feedback.

The Conclusion,

To conclude, processes are the essence of any business, and they are the assets for success, people come and go with their experience but a well-defined process is the real asset of any organization.