Workshop with Dr. Umit Ozen: Business Process Mapping
Posted by: meikah | 17 April 2012 | 3:59 am
Participants of the Managing Risk and Performance Through Business Process Management workshop were lucky to have Dr. Umit Ozen as the lead trainer.
He is an expert in Lean Production, Six Sigma, Process Management, Strategic Planning, Balance Scorecard, among other things. He has more than 18 years of experience in the fields of management strategies, so you can just imagine the depth of his knowledge, both theoretical and practical. You can be assured that when you are in the presence of trainers with this caliber, you will take home a lot of insights.
It was my first time to attend a workshop, and I promise myself that I will be taking workshops from now on. It’s interactive and more educational than attending a conference.
With Dr. Ozen, he was very generous with his ideas, and he’s the kind of trainer that is motivational and approachable. He went around, hopped on every table to see what each one of us was doing, and he would correct, suggest, and show us how to improve our output.
The first workshop we had, the activity was creating a business process map. He made us watch a video showing how to make a cup of delicious Turkish coffee. It looked so easy, but when the process mapping came, we didn’t really have an easy time.
Here’s my group doing the process map before presenting it to the group:
Reviewing our process map
Wrapping up our process map
Presenting our process map
Here’s the PLDT group, our seatmate, making their process map as well.
A process is easy to talk about, and in fact some are under the impression that it’s easy to do things, you just do it. But when you go to writing down and describing what you are do, it’s a different story. I admit, I was stumped for a time there, which means, I really need more training. {LOL}
Here are some tips in creating a process map:
Before drawing a process -
- Identify your process goals
- Determine your process starts and stop points
- List down your resources
- Identify your inputs and outputs
- Identify your customers and suppliers
- Identify your owner/responsible/practitioners
- Establish your procedures and forms
- Determine your performance indicators and targets
- Classify your sub-processes/activities carefully
It’s also important to know the process attributes:
- repetitive
- definable
- controllable
- manageable
- measurable
- continually improvable (PDCA)
- able to create added value
The key to creating a process map is teamwork. It is evident in the pictures above. The team huddled together and discuss how each member understands the process, after which the team draws the map. It is important that everyone understands the process before making the map. Of course, the process map is not carved in stone. When necessary, the process map can be updated and improved.
Another value of writing down your process map is that you will discover steps that are unnecessary, and thus you streamline. Then you can begin to go lean.
The prize of making the process map is a cup of Turkish cup! 
We didn’t get to taste the brewed one though. But Dr. Ozen brought in some instant 3-in-1 Turkish coffee. It was very rich and it tastes like rice coffee. Every sip, you get to taste some granules. It was yummy!
You may also want to read about what I learned during the workshop here. I suggest you look out for next year’s workshop session.
My BIG challenge now is to apply this to my workplace. 
Filed under: Balanced Scorecard, Business Process Mapping, Dr. Umit Ozen, Lean, Lean Six Sigma, ProcessModel, Six Sigma, Team Dynamics, Tools/Toolkits, Training
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Process Modeling and Simulation and Lean Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 8 March 2009 | 9:01 pm
Over at iQuality Process blog, Steven Bonacorsi, Senior Master Black Belt instructor and coach, puts forward the idea that a Lean Six Sigma initiative without process modeling and simulation is wanting.
Bonacorsi says that process modeling and simulation can accomplish the following:
- Predict performance of current processes against effectiveness, readiness and cost to determine areas of significant improvement potential
- Enable rapid analysis in situations with either extensive data or no data
- Provide an understanding of why key factors have the highest impact on results and where to focus efforts
- Meet quality objectives by determining optimal specifications and tolerances
- Communicate findings in a simple, highly visual manner
I see no reason why Lean Six Sigma can’t be done side by side with process modeling and simulation. Or you may want to incorporate process modeling and simulation in your Lean Six Sigma initiative.
Have you tried it?
Filed under: Lean Six Sigma, Processes, ProcessModel
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Six Sigma in your Donuts
Posted by: meikah | 11 November 2007 | 8:46 pm
Perhaps, next to hamburger, you often find donuts in people’s daily food fare. Thus, running a donut business is serious business.
Maidstone Bakeries know this too well. They produce more than 60 million donuts per week, and to ensure quality in their products and services, they feel they must go Six Sigma.
Dyadem, a leading provider of Quality Lifecycle Management and Risk Lifecycle Management solutions, will help Maidstone Bakeries, a joint venture between IAWS Group and Tim Hortons, achieve their goals.
According to Brett Kyle, Continuous Improvement training manager at Maidstone and Six Sigma master black belt:
“Six Sigma is a standard, disciplined methodology and Dyadem’s FMEA Pro-7 gave us an easy and painless way to take this approach, helping us solve problems using data rather than gut feel. Since the implementation, we’ve significantly reduced costs and clearly shifted to the next level of quality. FMEA-Pro showed us new ways to solve old problems, by helping us find the roots and develop new procedures to address them. The results were very often surprising.”
Source:
reliableplant.com, an iSixSigma featured link
*Photo from brantfordbrant.com
Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Dyadem, Food, iSixSigma, Maidstone Bakeries, ProcessModel, Six Sigma
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Nine Critical Factors to Help Six Sigma Deliver the Money
Posted by: meikah | 17 July 2007 | 8:07 pm
Perhaps one of the biggest questions in Six Sigma projects is how much they are contributing to the company bottomline. Some companies claim that after a year, or even six months, of Six Sigma, they are already enjoying a lot of savings. Others say that they have yet to see some ripple in their finances.
So aside from improved processes and allegedly happy customers, how can Six Sigma bring in the money to the organization?
ProcessModel, Inc. puts out nine critical factors to help Six Sigma deliver the money.
- Find the projects with the greatest overall return
- Overall interdependencies in processes
- Risk free experimentation
- Reduced experimentation time
- Optimize
- Impact of change on the existing process
- Combined projects required to see the money
- Close the gap between project inception and financial impact
- Communicate how a process will perform in understandable terms (even a manager can understand)
Apparently, all these factors are made possible with ProcessModel software. Yet, I believe that these nine factors are only logical to do. These are the things Six Sigma books tells practitioners to do when deploying Six Sigma projects. Good reminder for everyone, though.
*Photo from Stock.Xchng
