Two of the guiding principles of Business Excellence are process focus and quality comes first.
When these principles are combined together and embedded within a culture, this builds a deep-rooted understanding; results will only be as good as the quality of the processes that produce them.
Turning this understanding into advantage requires a disciplined, rigorous and relentless approach to running and optimising processes – applied to all processes at all levels and with an ever-increasing focus on fine margins.
Here are three key facets to consider:
Design
Before a process can be successfully managed and improved, its fundamental structure must be sound. This means:
- Identifying the process owner
- Mapping the value stream and designing (or redesigning) it to flow smoothly
- Designing the process measures and aligning them with the overall business strategy and with other processes
- Designing the management forums (e.g. daily, weekly and monthly meetings)
Ongoing management
This includes:
- Load management (matching capacity and demand)
- The planning and scheduling of process activity
- Resourcing
- Priming and maintaining
- Ongoing performance monitoring and management
- Engaging, managing and developing people
- Ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements
Continuous improvement
This includes:
- Ongoing kaizen improvements
- Identifying, capturing and prioritising improvement opportunities
- Tracking and managing ongoing improvement projects in a disciplined way
- Training colleagues in the fundamentals of structured problem-solving
- Making process-improvement specialists available to help with more complex problems
- Improving the process management process itself
Questions to consider
- How deeply embedded is your focus on process quality?
- What opportunities for performance improvement are waiting to be unlocked?
For a deeper dive, explore our guide to process management.
Let’s get to work
Over 27 years of practice, we have developed a comprehensive, time-tested and field-proven business-improvement model and toolkit. We partner with ambitious businesses to identify strategic breakthrough opportunities in capability, performance and results, and we provide the tools, support, training and coaching to complement their existing expertise and help them achieve these.
If you’re aiming to build or optimise a business system using sound principles, values and standards to deliver consistently excellent and continuously improving results, we can help you develop and implement a strategy to accelerate progress and amplify the impact of your journey.
To get in touch, contact us here to book a free consultation.
Discover more of our tools and methodology in our book Toward Excellence.
