Follow the Map

Follow the Map
By Michael Cousins - Triaster Limited

Six Sigma encapsulates the essence of what process improvement practitioners the world over know instinctively; that things go wrong because business processes are imperfect. The perfect process, which to discover is of course a never ending quest, delivers with 100% reliability exactly what the customer wants, in the timeframe they want it and at a price they are willing to pay. An imperfect process will result in occasional late delivery, or delivery of a product that disappoints the customer. Once a business analyst has correlated customer dissatisfaction with process imperfection, the stage is set to begin improving the offending processes to better meet customer need. Six Sigma is just one of many methodologies, or frameworks, available to the business analyst to diagnose process flaws, identify ways of removing those flaws and ultimately phasing in better ways of working.

This article shows how process mapping can be used by the Six Sigma black belt or green belt to help them in two essential aspects of the Six Sigma method. The first is in the initial capture of the process where true understanding of how things are done currently is developed, this being vital to build an objective case for improving the process. The second is in the improvement phase itself where it is necessary to prototype, experiment, communicate and ultimately explain how process improvements affect the new way of doing things. This article also explains how any enterprise seeking to document a process can use the distributed process mapping methodology to get the mapping phase completed quickly and with the most accurate results, as well as ensuring total staff buy-in and ownership of the eventual outcome.

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Follow the Map

Regards,
Simon