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Process Control has become an important first step in Business Process
Management.
Process Control simply means that a process must be able to work within a
certain range before an organization can start work on process improvement.
Some organizations who use quality or six sigma as one of their improvement
tools might use process control charts to get their process under control.
Process Control Charts simply track the performance of a process over time. As
long as a process is performing within a certain range, that process is said to
be under control. For example, an organization might decide that they want to
finalize their monthly financial statements within 5 days after the close of the
previous months. They may decide that as long as they finalize their monthly
financial statements within 4 to 6 days (plus or minus 1 day of the target) they
will consider their process in control. Meanwhile a doctor performing Lasik
surgery on your eyes might need a range of only plus or minus 1/100 of an inch.
Thus different processes require tighter or looser ranges to be considered
acceptable.
Once a process is in control, an organization can start improving that
process. Improving a process prior to getting it under control is often a waste
of time because employees won't know what is causing the process to have large
variations. If there are a number of drivers causing these large variations then
how would anyone know how important each driver is.
In some cases everyone knows the process is broken. In this case, it may make
sense to throw out the old process and just redesign or reengineer a new
process.
Process control techniques have been around for over 100 years and are well
proven. The problem with process control techniques like control charts is that
employees may not consistently collect the data needed to determine if process
control has been achieved.
Process Control is a subset of Process Management. Process Control is often
thought of as being a Quality Management or Six Sigma Tool. However,
Process Control Is really just part of Process Management.
Call John Antos, Jim Brimson or Pat Dowdle at
972-980-7407 to find out more about Process Control and Process Management.
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