Last week we identified the most common process maturity level in many organizations, phase one — Reactive.  Few organizations are able to advance much farther up in management system maturity.  This week we will look at the next two levels in our process maturity model that describe the phases in which an effective management system comes to life.  The Documentation and Stability Phases.

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Your management system consists of business processes that interact with each other through documents and records.  Yet in many companies the system appears to be functioning whether anything is documented or recorded.  Can this be an effective management system?  It depends on the process management maturity of your organization.

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Everywhere in your organization people are carrying out business processes to make things happen. It doesn’t matter if the processes are well defined, poorly documented or if the staff is trained. If things are getting done – it is because people are executing business processes.

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“I am here to audit you.”  That phrase can strike fear in most of us, thanks in part to our good friends at the IRS.  In the business world as well, those five words can send a chill down the spine of everyone from the Finance VP to the shipping department clerk.  But it shouldn’t. 

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Last week we covered the positive results of using lean tools to reorganize a production area.   The Bizmanualz manual and CD production area achieved a 75% reduction in finished product inventory, a 50% reduction in production time, as well as improved machine capabilities and reduced errors.

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Improvement Journey at Bizmanualz

At Bizmanualz, our mission is to help businesses and organizations improve through helping them implement innovative techniques and proven best practices. That philosophy carries through our manuals, our training classes, and our consulting efforts.

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In the previous series of articles, we discussed applying Statistical Process Control (SPC) to business processes. Although SPC has been around for a long time and is applicable to the current world of Lean, Six Sigma, and ISO, it is often overlooked.

SPC is a great tool to not only monitor the current and recent behavior of a process, but is also a great tool to support Continuous Improvement activities.

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Part 4 of a 4-Part Series

We come now to what started this “Road to Six Sigma” series in the first place, Dr. Shewhart’s simple control tool, the control chart. The control chart is really two time-based charts plotted on the same form. For simplicity’s sake, we will focus on control charts for variable individual readings because

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Part 3 of a 4 part series

In the previous article we discussed how to use cause-effect diagrams and scatter diagrams to identify the causes of problems and to quantify the impact of solving those problems. I said then that we would be discussing

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Part 2 of a 3 part series

Last week we talked about using Pareto analysis for organizing, simplifying, and prioritizing problem solving. This week, we’re going to introduce two simple tools which can be used together to improve the performance of business systems. In improving any process,

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