From that title alone, we can assume that there should be a happy marriage between Six Sigma and process management. After all, Six Sigma is all about process management and improvement. The success of any business depends on how well it is able to manage its processes, and improve it.
The premise for Six Sigma or Lean is for a company to do only the relevant processes to save and be more efficient.
According to an article on BNET titled, The Convergence of Six Sigma and Process Management, process management involves mapping a process, determining the inputs and outputs, linking one process output to another process input, characterizing their performance, and then attempting to either monitor or control them. Six Sigma, for its part, is a structured approach that recognizes the inability of a process or business characteristic to meet its requirements. In many cases, a near intuitive or logical solution is available; these types of solutions are one of the many benefits derived from a process management activity.
When the two concepts converge:
Six Sigma, with its DMAIC approach to problem solving, tends to be very constant in terms of the phases used. Business Process Management (BPM) tends to have stages of completion with potentially increasing levels of activity.
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If your organization has started with business process management (BPM) before starting Six Sigma, BPM will help you identify where it is most beneficial to apply Six Sigma. This is because Process Management provides the identification of problematic areas of the business and incapable process outputs. It is on these “incapable” processes and process outputs that the power of Six Sigma is focused to achieve improvement.
If an organization has implemented Six Sigma and then launches a BPM activity, BPM is a
catalyst for improvement. Implementing Six Sigma first provides an appreciation for the
importance of process, the need to organically find Six Sigma projects and the need to manage
processes for stability and predictability.Continue reading about the Six Sigma Methodology in Harmony with BPM.
*Photo from MorgueFile
