Process improvement is a vital strategy every company needs to implement in order to stay competitive. It can help companies save money by identifying inefficiencies such as project teams with too many layers of management or manufacturing teams that spend their time on unnecessarily repetitive tasks.
Team leaders can also make sure improvement activities are top of mind by adding them to daily standups or setting up a monthly retrospective meeting.
Identifying Opportunities
If you want your business to be more efficient, start by identifying opportunities for improvement. This could be anything from reducing the number of back-and-forth emails to increasing team productivity. The key is finding a cadence that works for your business and sticking with it. Whether that means dedicating an afternoon to improving processes or adding process improvement questions to your daily standup, this activity should be at the forefront of everyone's mind.
Dysfunctional processes can create all sorts of problems, including frustrated customers, stressed colleagues, and missed deadlines. By investing in process improvement, you can eliminate these issues and boost your overall efficiency.
You may find it useful to use a method like PDCA, which stands for plan, do, check, and act. This model is a good place to start as it's based on Process Improvement Lean and Kaizen methodologies. It helps you identify what needs improvement, make changes, evaluate the results, and then implement a new plan.
Mapping Your Processes
Taking advantage of process improvement opportunities requires first identifying your processes. While every company has numerous processes, you should start with those that have a direct impact on revenue or are causing significant pain points for your customers.
Once you have identified these processes, you need to map out each step of the process. This is often a very involved and time-consuming task. To make this a successful exercise it is best to have a small group of people, with a wide range of knowledge and experience, working on the mapping sessions.
During the map session, it is important that everyone participates in the discussion and answers questions fully to get a complete picture of the current state. You should also be sure to use standardized notation and stickies so that any member of the team can quickly understand the map. This is often a good opportunity to identify any waste and potential improvements. Once the map is completed, physically walk through it to be sure you have captured everything.
Creating a Redesigned Process
It's easy to become comfortable with the processes your business has in place. After all, they've been working well for months, maybe years. But comfort can quickly turn into complacency, and eventually you'll start noticing costs creeping up in unexpected places or productivity slowing down for no apparent reason.
To avoid inefficiencies, create a new process that takes into account all the steps involved. If you're unsure where to begin, speak with people who are familiar with the process and ask them what they think could be improved.
Remember to keep the customer front and center as you're creating a new process. Your new process should support the customer experience by linking your internal business processes to how customers buy products or services from your company. By making the link, employees can more easily see how their work contributes to the customer's overall buying journey. Also, it helps them to understand the impact of their actions on the company's revenue.
Implementing Changes
Once you've figured out how to improve a process, it's time to implement the changes. This may involve training employees, changing current systems or even introducing new technology. Whatever the scope of your improvement, it's important to plan carefully to avoid operational disruptions and ensure that the changes are carried out smoothly.
Depending on how big the change is, you might want to test it first on a small scale. That way, you can see if the improvements work as expected without creating mammoth knock-on effects in other parts of your workflow.
It's also important to track the results of your process improvements to ensure that they are having a positive impact on your business. This could be in the form of revenue growth, cost savings or increased customer satisfaction levels. Achieving these goals requires a continuous approach to improving processes, as business objectives and market conditions change. You should always be on the lookout for new opportunities to improve your existing processes.
