Business Process Improvement (BPI)
Business process improvement is a component of Business Process Management the discipline in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes. Any combination of methods can be used to improve the organizations ability to execute their mission at a high level efficiently and effectively.
Continuous Process Improvement (CPI)
Continuous process improvement (CPI) is the act of implementing improvements to a product, service or process. These changes can either be incremental (over time) or breakthrough (all at once).
CPI isn’t a one-time initiative. You don’t just optimize a certain process once, pat yourself on the back, and call it a day. Once you succeed with a process improvement initiative, you need to periodically look back and see whether there are any changes you could make.
Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) Techniques
Business Process Mapping
To get a better idea of the hows and whys of the process you’re working on, you’ll need to create a business process map. The simplest way is to create a flowchart including different process steps.
Deming Cycle (PDCA)
The Deming Cycle, also known as PDCA, is a concept introduced by Dr. Edwards Deming. There are 4 steps:
- Plan – Identifying a goal or purpose, formulating a theory, defining success metrics, and putting a plan into action.
- Do – Implementing the plan on a small scale to prove or disprove it’s validity
- Check – Measuring and monitoring outcomes to test the validity of the plan. This allows for identification of potential problems and areas for improvement
- Act – Taking the knowledge gained from the previous steps and putting it to use. This can either mean implementing it on a wider scale or restart the cycle and apply the lessons learned to change the plan for the better
Creating the Culture for Continuous Process Improvement (CPI)
The key to establishing a culture of continuous process improvement is to make it a part of company culture. It should start top-down from the organization – senior leaders should encourage managers to make suggestions on process improvement. This, in turn, will trickle down from the managers to those executing the tasks on the front-line.
As a given, there should be a system that rewards initiative. Anyone that contributes an idea or two (whether it’s implemented or not) should be encouraged and rewarded.
An example of a system you can use is the “Kaizen Corner.” It’s a place where all of your workers can go and hand in suggestions on how to improve processes. This usually works in three stages…
- Everyone’s suggestions and considered and evaluated. The employees are made aware of the reasoning for accepting certain suggestions and rejecting others. This helps show your team that their input is valued, whether their suggestions are implemented or not.
- To ensure that the employees do a better job in the long-term, you hold training on process analysis.
- Offer different incentives for employees to help with process improvement.
DMAIC is an acronym that describes a sequential step-by-step approach that can be used to improve a business activity.
Define the business activity
Measure the variables impacting the business activity
Analyze the measured data to develop an understanding of how each input impacts the output of the business activity.
Improve, or adjust the way the business activity is executed in order to optimize the output of the business activity.
Control, establish routine ways to adjust and maintain those activities that impact the optimization of the output of the business activity.
Program Objective Memorandum
A Program Objective Memorandum is a recommendation from the Services and Defense Agencies to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) concerning how they plan to allocate resources (funding) for a program(s) to meet the Service Program Guidance (SPG) and Defense Planning Guidance (DPG).
Army Reform Initiative
Army reform initiative is a systematic approach for the identification, adjudication, approval and implementation of reform initiatives designed to free up time, money and manpower for redirection to other priorities and to empower subordinate commands to make efficient, timely and effective decisions. The end state of reform initiatives is authorities, responsibilities and resources residing at the lowest level of command enabling expeditious action and informed decisions.
Business Mission Area
The business interest of the Army mission area framework. Working in coordination with the defense intelligence, warfighting, and enterprise information environment mission areas, the BMA guides, governs, and manages all business operating activities and associated business system portfolios within the Army. It is organized along six primary domains (acquisition, financial management and comptroller, human resource management, installation, energy, and environment, logistics and training and readiness) that encompass DoD validated business operating activities. It ensures that the generating force provides the right capabilities, organization, resources, and materiel to the operating force.
Domain
A domain is a subset of the BMA portfolio that aligns to areas of common operational and functional require-ments. A BMA domain includes the core business processes of that mission subset and the business systems that predominantly support those core business processes. The Army retains six BMA domains: acquisition ASA(ALT), financial management ASA(FM&C), human resources management ASA(M&RA)/DCS, G – 1, logis-tics ASA(ALT)/DCS, G – 4, installations, energy, and environment (ASA(IE&E)/DCS, G-9 and training and readi-ness DCS-G3/5/7.Leaders drive the performance improvement process.