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process improvement is when you improve a process.
thanks for reading.
omg totally got u. :P
process improvement 101 and six sigma¶
Lately I've been partying it up on here about Six Sigma and getting my certification in it. Six Sigma is one of many methods that have been created for
PROCESS IMPROVEMENT¶
what is dis?
well for the purpose of clarity let's define our big two:
process : a set of steps to complete a task or project
improvement : a considerable betterment in the affected noun
( the phrase process improvement will appear at least a million more times before this post is over but it is literally the simplest way to describe what the thing is unless you call it sets of steps betterer....it's still in beta I'll think of something )
Doing your laundry is a process, driving to the store is a process. Most of what you do for your job is probably a set of processes, making muffins, magic, stubbing your toe.
Life is processes...
Anyway, people love improving processes so much that they've even written down and developed entire methodology to teach others how to do it too! You may have heard of some of these methodologies - Scrum, Agile, JumpStart, Lean Process Management, Total Quality Management, Customer Experience Management Method, Business Process Reengineering, or the most super mainstream ultra popular fine-wine sounding method of them all Rummler-Brache.
idk.
and Six Sigma.
The main focus of improving a process (in business) is to improve the output of a product or service whether that be it for quality, quantity, and/or overall revenue.
HOW do these methodologies improve processes?
We'll use Six Sigma for the example - SS focuses on customer satisfaction. For us to know what customer satisfaction is, it must be measured.
Once we get an idea of what our most satisfied customers want, versus our not-very-happy customers, we can start to identify what defects exist in a process leading up to providing that unhappy customer their product or service, and how the 'defective' (vocab word) product varies from the near perfect satisfying product.
What Six Sigma intends to do is to eliminate that variability so we can start producing our product or service within that specific "satisfied customer" metric.
Yay. Data visualization.
That probably doesn't make sense conceptually but you're in luck - I have an analogy.
At my job in Colorado, all of my coworkers and I had unlimited access to the resorts materials and products located in super sneaky supply closets all over the resort. Most of our calls most nights tended to be the same few requests, coffee, towels, and linens (and various other small things like shampoo, soap, etc.)
Since these calls were our highest volume of requests and driving back and forth between the nearest supply closet to the most remote condo could take you the better part of a half an hour sometimes, my team and I started carrying a container of these supplies in our trucks so we can drive straight to the condo, delivery the thingymabob and close the case when before, we were getting the call, finding a nearby closet, maybe discovering it's not a linen closet and actually the housekeeper's manager's secret stash of snacks and soda, invite the boys, have a snack party, think to clean bugle fingers off, can't find linens and you remember the delivery, finder another closet, get the goods, drive to the condo, make the delivery, repeat.
That's the general idea about process improvement. Wanted to go over the gist of it before I start diving into the whats-its and whodunnits of "How it REALLY works."
Thanks for reading!