Developing Effective Process & Procedures

 

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One of the operational level documents stated in the article ‘Understanding Governance Documents’ is the Procedure. This is a very common document found in both large and small organisations, whatever the nature of business may be. Effectiveness at the workplace results from managing both people and processes effectively. In the article Effectiveness at Workplace we have seen that one of the enablers of achieving effectiveness is the process.

Delivering a product or service to the customer is a result of coordinated and collaborative effort of several functions in the organisation. To achieve this business goal, an organisation carries out various activities, some of which are interrelated and interlinked. A process may be stated as a set of interrelated activities carried out using the inputs and resources to produce a set of intended products and/or services to achieve specific objectives. If we take new product launching as a process, its sequential steps may include analyse the market needs -> Identify new product -> Design product -> develop prototype -> test prototype -> finalise design -> develop manufacturing facility -> produce product -> market product.

A Process converts the input into an output. During the conversion, it has measurements, monitoring and controls of input, process and the output. For some organisations, along with the output, it may be necessary to measure the outcome and the impact. Measurements and monitoring is important to identify any deviations and errors and implement timely corrective actions. The process measurements ensure that the corrective actions are timely and proactive, while the output measurements and monitoring ensure that the right quality is delivered to the customers. 

The process tells us ‘What’ is done to achieve the objective and the procedure tells us ‘How’ the activities are performed. For all practical purposes, both the process and procedure are combined in one document. When documented, a procedure represents the descriptive part of the process, while the Process Flow diagram is the graphical representation. It is a good practice to draw the graphical representation first to get clarity before writing a procedure.

There are business processes and technical processes. Based on the purpose, the business processes may be of various types such as for managing the organisation, for managing resources, for managing operations, and for measurement, analysis and improvements. Chemical processing, petroleum processing, maintenance, and manufacturing are some of the examples of technical processes. The technical procedures are generally called Standard Operating Procedures or SOPs.

Developing the process and procedures is more of an art that requires constant practice. Some guidelines are presented in this article, but these guidelines alone cannot address every situation and type of process. They can only support the domain experts in each field.

When we talk of process and procedure, generally manufacturing or business processes come to our mind, but this need not be the case. Take for example a village farmer’s work. Buying the seeds, ploughing, sowing, irrigation, spraying of pesticides, manuring, harvesting all have a specific sequence, time and way of doing. The farmer knows exactly how to do it and when to do it. He does not make a process flow diagram and write a procedure, but the knowledge is passed on from generation to generation and it is followed with little change. This is also a process - undocumented. The industrial and business processes on the other hand are documented. This article deals with only the documented processes and procedures. Article 'Documenting Policy & Procedures' deals with various ways of documenting Policy and Procedures in particular and other Governance Documents in general.

Although the guidelines provided here are more suited for business processes, these can also be applied for general technical processes such as maintenance, manufacturing, assembly shops etc. 

Need for a documented Process and Procedure:

The process development may involve a new process or improving or enhancing an existing process.The need for developing process and procedures arises in the following three circumstances:

1. Setting up a new business

2. A business that has been operating for a long time without documented process and procedures

3. Documented process and procedures exist, but require improvement or reengineering

The first instance is for a business process professional to design the processes and implement them as the organisation starts functioning. Changes may be made to address issues that may crop up during the operations. As the start is with a clean slate, the best design can be implemented. There are no legacy processes and there is little resistance to change. The employees in this case are new, who can be easily moulded and the processes receive easy  acceptance. However, even the best designed processes become inefficient after some time due to factors such as changed business environment, new knowledge and skills, new processes, materials, and technologies etc.

A documented process and procedure is mandatory in areas like chemical industry, petrochemical industry, explosives and blasting agents manufacturing etc. They are also mandatory for some corporate certifications and accreditations such as ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems, EFQM Excellence Model, NABH, and Baldridge Award. Most of the corporate accreditations and certifications look at the process and procedures to assess meeting the standards and compliance.

A documented process and procedure keeps the work organised and helps in a great way in creating value to the customers. In a complex process often the final customer remains obscure to the upstream process personnel and the documented procedures fill this gap and create a vital link between every process element and the customer.

Who can develop a Process and Procedure?

The person who develops a process and procedure must possess adequate organisational knowledge including the structure, products, services, resources, infrastructure and policies. This integrated knowledge is important because the processes operate in a business environment impacting other processes and in turn being impacted by some of them. The person must possess adequate business analysis and technical writing skills and must be free from any vested interest.

Although the process development professionals can facilitate development and technical writers can help in documenting technical processes, it is important to involve domain experts throughout the development process.

Features of a well developed process & procedure

A well developed process and procedure is efficient, making the employees more effective at the workplace. It contains measures for ensuring quality, enhances teamwork and clearly fixes responsibility without any ambiguity, thus reducing disputes and conflicts at the workplace. It fosters innovation and improvement. Some of the key features of a well developed process and procedure are given below.

People Centred:

While developing processes and procedures, do not forget that the people are as important as the process itself. People involved here are suppliers (input), process employees, and the customers (output). It should promote a positive work culture, ensuring employees safety and wellbeing. Use automation extensively to prevent the operator making mistakes, thus reducing the work stress. 

Stakeholder involvement throughout the development process is important to create a sense of ownership amongst the procedure users. Seek inputs from operating level employees at the development stage and review feedback from the stakeholders on the draft procedure before finalisation.  

Customised:

The process and procedures must be tailored for each organisation. Consider each workplace as different even for very common processes. There is often a misconception that one processes working efficiently for one organisation should also work for the other. Remember that the work culture, the management style, the customer expectations, the products, level of automation, the work environment all differ and they have their own influence on the processes. Sometimes there is a tendency for an employee joining a new organisation to think that all that was done in the previous organisation is right and the one happening in the new organisation is inefficient. The resistance to change is carried on from one organisation to the other. If such employees are in influential positions, they end up blindly copying the previous organisation’s process, which can have disastrous consequences. 

Aligned with Policies and other higher level documents:

The procedures are an extension and implementation of the policies and other higher level documents and therefore must be aligned to them in every respect without any contradictions. 

It is important to take into account the business strategy of the organisation while designing or improving the business processes. The business strategy also affects other aspects such as organisation structure, delegation, automation etc. that are important considerations while working on process and procedures.

Alignment with the delegated decision authorities and financial authorities in particular is important in terms of controls. 

Any special terms used should have the same meaning as assigned in higher level documents. The lower level document cannot define a different meaning for them.

Clear and concise process flow diagram:

The process flow must be simple with the right level of details and the procedure should use the language operating people can understand. Avoid spaghetti process flow diagrams - process flow diagrams with too many long crossover and recursive lines that are difficult to trace.

If the process flow diagram becomes too long and complex, identify distinct sub-processes and represent each sub-process on different pages.

Enforces compliance:

Complying with applicable laws, regulations, and certification standards must be enforced by the process and procedures. In a well designed process and procedure, it is easy to monitor compliance and identify any deviations.

Implement industry best practices:

It is not necessary to reinvent the wheel every time you develop a process and procedure. There are organisations in similar business whose experience can be tapped. Every new knowledge is built on the foundation of existing knowledge. Although industry leaders set new standards, it is common practice to study industry best practices and implement what suits your organisation. While doing so, the assumptions must always be challenged to ensure that what you learn from others is indeed best for your organisation.

Safe and prevent accidents:

 

State clearly the safety precautions to be taken while starting the process, shutting down, starting a machine, handling materials, entering data in the system etc. The safety related instructions should be clear to minimise human error. This should enable prevention of accidents and undesired outcomes. The procedure should identify the potential hazards in the process and address them with necessary precautions and preventive actions. 

The technical procedures such as plant operations, maintenance etc. are required to make provision for contingencies. Such provisions must be highlighted and must precede the operational descriptions. For industrial processes involving hazards, the emergency response actions should be part of the procedure.

Ensure quality of product and services:

A good process and procedure ensures the quality of the products and services it produces. Include the conditions to be maintained such as a specific temperature range, pressure, flow etc. in technical processes. For plant and equipment, include critical operating parameters provided by the manufacturer. Include samples, instrument readings, and measurements to be taken and its frequency to ensure the process performance as well as the quality of the output is maintained.

For services, review of the documents generated, validation of data entered etc. may be necessary during the process to ensure the quality of final service delivered. 

Effective Communication:

A good procedure must make provisions for effective communications at every key stage or milestone of the process. Delays in communication or frequent miscommunication are the symptoms of an inefficient process and a signal to look into it for improvement. The miscommunication or delays can be internal or external. Any such occurrence with the government or regulatory bodies is a cause of concern and therefore the process and procedure must ensure monitoring of these parameters.

Waste elimination:

A good process and procedures development identifies process wastes and tries to minimise them to provide a competitive edge to the organisation. The Toyota Production System (TPS) identifies seven process wastes (Muda) which are Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Overprocessing and Defects. Current TPS implementations have identified an eighth waste i.e. Skills which refers to unused or underutilised talent.

It is important to eliminate these wastes right at the  process and procedure development stage. Some of the wastes found in the service sector are too much documentation, too many approvals, duplication of data entry and handling too many printed documents. Eliminating the waste entails the right amount of delegation and empowerment. It means creating an environment of trust.

A good process and procedure ensure capturing and entering of necessary data as the process progresses and establishing a system for necessary periodic reporting. In their absence, it becomes a wasteful ritual every week or every month to spend time gathering and compiling data for the work that is already done, analysing it and generating reports and presentations.

Avoid too many person’s and function’s involvement in a single process. If there are too many iterations between different departments, it is worth considering reorganisation on a functional basis for greater effectiveness. Think of reskilling or multi-skilling to reduce the number of handovers in a single process.

Documented:

A good process and procedure must be well documented using standardised templates. Article 'Documenting Policy & Procedures' provides further guidelines on this topic.

The process flow diagram may be made using any application as long as it is able to depict the process graphically with ease. I am not advocating any specific brand or manufacturer here. Try to find an application where you can attach the activity description or narrative to the process diagram box and generate the procedure document automatically. In case of online viewing, when the cursor is hovered over an activity box or when the activity box is clicked, it should be able to display the description of that activity.

The level of detail is an important aspect, which depends on the business environment, nature of the process, the level of competency of the user group, the level of autonomy and delegation in operations etc. For a process where there is frequent turnover of operational staff, a more detailed procedure is preferable, which can also act as a training material. If the procedure is for a highly empowered group with proven competencies, a high level short procedure in the form of a guideline may be sufficient.  Assess the target user group before starting documenting the process and procedure.

Understand the documentation requirements of applicable laws, regulations, certifications and accreditations and comply with those requirements.

The documentation should also be suitable for use as a training material for new employees.

Clear and complete:

The process must be clear in all respects with end to end coverage, without leaving any gaps.  It should not leave any room for the operator to make guesses or use their own methods. Any documents - internal or external, referred in the procedure must be listed. 

In technical processes and procedures, the tools and instruments required should be listed with critical measurements to ensure quality. Where machinery and equipment is part of the process, the manufacturers often provide specific ways to operate the machines for ensuring their efficiency and safety. Any such requirements or guidelines provided by the manufacturer must be either part of the procedure or referenced within the procedure.

If a decision is subject to meeting certain business or technical parameters, such conditions must be fully explained without leaving any scope for assumptions.

If any deadlines are to be adhered to such as quarterly reporting, annual budget preparation etc. those dates or number of days in relation to other events must be clearly specified.

Where computation or calculations are involved, to achieve clarity, a better way is to provide a formula rather than describing the calculations.

Accountability:

The accountability for each activity in the process, for implementing and enforcing the procedure, and for keeping it updated and current should be clearly indicated in the documentation.

Integrated:

One of the wastes in a system is lack of integration of different processes resulting in duplication of work and data entry or manually transferring data from one system to the other. Look for integrating various systems and processes to avoid duplications and also where applicable, ensure that the output of one process is seamlessly integrated into another process as input. The processes must also be integrated with ERP or other business applications used by the organisation. For example, the data gathered by the condition monitoring system for a plant or equipment can be integrated with ERP to trigger preventive maintenance processes.

Factual and realistic:

Stakeholder engagement is essential during development of process and procedures to ensure that the assumptions are based on past data or experience of the users. 

Involve actual operating people while developing or redesigning the processes and procedures. They have a wealth of knowledge and experience about the process they work with. They know the good and bad of it. They know the pain areas and often they feel the pain. You may be an expert in providing solutions, but the diagnostic has to be right. Only a patient can tell the doctor what ailment he or she has and where the pain is.

Controls and compliance:

Once the procedures are developed, it is important to enforce compliance. The early stakeholder engagement and buy-in ensures voluntary compliance.

Incorporate necessary controls at critical transition points in the process. The controls are related to approvals, especially where funds commitment is involved or commitment of costly resources like material and manpower. 

Avoid approvals involving multiple functions under different reporting hierarchies. This is a sure way to ensure delays and complicate coordination. However, in certain situations this may be necessary to ensure elimination of conflict of interest and enforce due diligence and process integrity.

Necessary quality assurance related measurements, financial approvals, and authorisations at various stages must be built into the procedure. This is especially important for processes involving large projects where considerable resources are committed at each stage. The checks and approvals at each stage must ensure that the output of one stage is suitable for processing at the next stage.

Automation:

While developing processes, take into consideration the automation aspect. All large organisations have ERP and others have similar IT applications. Each of these applications have certain features, capabilities and constraints. While it is important to take these constraints and capabilities into account, they should not be the limiting factor in designing and improving your processes. In fact the ERP or other IT system used should be able to meet your process requirements. The process design should precede system automation. Some customisations may be necessary in the ERP or other applications that you use, but the customisation should not pose a challenge during system upgrade.

Check whether the work currently done manually can be done by a machine and where automation already exists, can a new system or improved system can further enhance the effectiveness or improve the safety. Automation should specifically be considered for hazardous tasks and tasks involving strenuous work for the operators.

Process efficiency:

The process efficiency may be referred to as achieving the stated goals, products, services or outcomes with minimum resources. The word ‘minimum’ itself is relative. It may be in comparison with current state, in comparison with the industry standards or in comparison with the benchmarking with peer organisations. It may also mean elimination of identified process wastes or adding more value with existing resources. For some it may simply mean improved work experience to the employees by providing them some free time or reducing risky and strenuous physical work.

The greed for achieving process efficiency should not lead one to ignore the human factor. The efficiency achieved by making people work harder can be short lived. On the other hand, achieving it by eliminating waste, introducing automation, and training etc. can be permanent and can have a positive cascading effect.

Steps for developing a Process & Procedure:

The steps we discuss here are for documented processes and procedures, and for organisations - not individuals. For tasks carried out by individuals based on their own knowledge and skills such as artisans,musicians, artists etc.  we do not need a documented process and procedure.

Identify the need & define the goals:

Just like any other task, for developing a process and procedure too there should be a need. The identified need for developing the process and procedures leads to the goals and the outcomes to be achieved. The need may arise out of the following reasons:

• Preparing a new business to start operations

• Inefficiency in the existing process is felt in terms of process wastes, excessive resource requirements, pressure on profitability, frequent failures in delivery of product and services to customers, high rate of rejections or other quality issues, customer dissatisfaction, implementing ERP or other integrated systems or enhancing them, introduction of or changes in automation, enterprise wide business process reengineering etc.

• Preparing for corporate certifications such as ISO or other QMS systems, Environmental Management Systems, CIPS corporate certifications, and GHA or ACI for Hospital accreditation  etc.

Once the need has been identified, the scope of work needs to be determined. It may cover the entire organisation with all its processes or a specific function, depending on the need. In a complex process, sometimes the scope may be just part of a process where immediate attention is necessary. While determining the scope, attention  needs to be given to interrelated processes. For example, changes in employee performance rating procedure may also require changes in goal setting or training procedures.

If your scope involves several new processes and procedures, prioritise based on which one has operational issues, time consuming, more error prone, more customer facing, or used more frequently. It is a good idea to follow the workflow and the value stream.

Study current state - ‘As-is’:

The as-is state may be drafted either by walk-through or talk-through method. For a simple process, a walk-through involving observing first hand the work being carried out may be more suitable. For other processes either a combination of both or only talk-through may be used. Talk-through involves discussing with people involved in the process and also studying available documentation. The idea is to study the organisation, processes, products, services, available resources, automations and constraints to get a complete overview of the system as a whole. Understand the bottlenecks, pain areas, process deviations, shortcuts frequently resorted to, and machine downtimes etc. Study the customer complaints pertaining to quality as well as service. Study the audit reports and non-compliances. Take into account any process improvements implemented, but not documented. For technical processes, gather all technical specifications, manuals, equipment parameters, and limits.

While mapping the as-is process, involve as many operating level personnel as possible. Best way to start would be discussion with the head of that function and mapping the process based on his/her understanding. It is not a good idea to start with one common session involving all stakeholders together in one forum in the beginning. The higher positions, stronger personalities, and influencers may take over and it will be a reflection of their perception. Once the mapping, based on the function head’s perception is done, it's time to engage with the operating level staff individually. If there are too many people involved, identify a few representatives ensuring each process element is represented. Eliciting information from existing employees is a difficult task. All have their own biases and sometimes self-serving biases. The information that is passed on is filtered through these biases. The facilitator must be aware of this fact and tactful in asking the right questions to get a clear and accurate picture of the current state. The total time spent on an activity for example, may involve excess time on account of incompetency of the operator, badly maintained machine, outdated technology, incompatibility of a recently added machine with other existing technology, over dependence on a specific skill or person etc., which if not properly understood can lead to incorrect conclusions.

Take into consideration the total process time, value-adding time, and non-value adding time for each activity. From this data, identify the productive and non-productive time. While gathering this data, beware of the danger that you may ask this to a highly productive employee or a least productive employee. Both data can be misleading. The sample should be large enough to nullify these discrepancies. A better way of doing this is in a workshop and gathering a consensus.

A workshop and a brainstorming session may be held with key stakeholders for discussing the initial inputs gathered for as-is process map.  Such sessions help in a great way in pinpointing the bottlenecks and identifying the process wastes, leading to their elimination. It also helps in validating the information provided by individuals during one on one interactions. With inputs from existing documentation and inputs from key stakeholders, map as-is process. 

For a new business, the as-is state may be based on industrial best practices. This can be the reference line to discuss the to-be state with the stakeholders.

Identify risks and opportunities:

It is important to identify key risks and either eliminate or adequately address the mitigation plan while designing a new process.

Along with the risks, the opportunities available either due to new business strategies, a changed work environment, business environment, changes in technology, diversity of the employees, new knowledge and skills of the employees or availability of new resources should be taken into consideration. 

Design and document ‘To-Be’ state:

Based on the analysis of the as-is state, develop new process and procedure taking into account the following:

• Arranging the tasks in a logical sequence, with  parallel paths where simultaneous parallel processing is possible

• Streamlining and simplifying

• Reorganising and consolidating similar tasks

• Where possible, eliminating non-value adding activities

• Eliminating the activities that are redundant or can be done by other simpler means

• Automating manual tasks

Be realistic while developing the to-be process. Take into consideration the constraints and ‘no-go’ zones, which often exist in organisations. Your ideal to-be process may involve one of such no-go zone activities or fall outside the constraint boundaries. Such activities need to be modified for compliance. One of your ideal to-be proposals may be implementing an ERP, but the organisation may not be prepared for it or may not have adequate resources at this stage. Such constraints require due consideration.

Current competency level of the employees, including their knowledge and skill levels is another important consideration. The competency levels and the work culture cannot be changed overnight. In such situations, a phased approach to implementing new processes and procedures may be necessary. 

Document the new processes and procedures using standard templates and in a language to match the understanding of the end users. The document should include both the process map and the procedure. Make sure that the document is user friendly, which can also be used for training employees. 

How to document the policies, process, and procedures will be discussed in a separate article in this blog.

Review and feedback from stakeholders:

Circulate the draft document to all key stakeholders for their review and feedback. It is a good idea to form a small task force consisting of key stakeholders and the process owners to review the feedback received and identify suggestions for implementation. 

Incorporate feedback and make final draft:

Incorporate changes agreed by key stakeholders from the feedback received and draft the final version of the process and procedure document for approval and release.

Obtain Approvals:

Obtain approval of the final version of the process and procedure based on appropriate level of authority delegated with the decision authority. The approved document must be published to ensure availability to the operating people, meeting the certification and accreditation standards, if any.

Test new process:

Complex processes may require testing before going live. Only testing a process in the real environment can ultimately prove its effectiveness. The testing should be carried out before full deployment to avoid work disruptions. Any issues observed during testing must be documented, discussed and resolved, and the process updated before going live. 

Be prepared for some amount of normal work disruptions during the final implementation phase. Some teething problems are always expected. What matters is how quickly you respond and how effectively you deal with it.

Where the IT systems are involved and process automation is part of the scope, the testing involves actually carrying out the work using the IT systems configured as per the new process. It is a good practice to prepare test scripts simulating all possible scenarios to ensure that the system does not fail when implemented.

Train users:

Major changes in the process and procedures require training the end users and reorient them from old practices. This also holds true for new employees. Training ensures that the baseline understanding of the process and interpretation of the procedures is consistent across the organisation.

Training may be using class-room based sessions or on the job training or a combination of both depending on the type of the process. For technical processes, sometimes external training at the manufacturer's premises or other locations may be necessary.

Review and enhance the process periodically:

Monitor the performance for some time to see if the process encounters any unforeseen challenges or the results are unintended. Necessary action needs to be taken to implement corrections.

Make a provision for timely reporting of any process issues and ensure that these early warnings are dealt with appropriately. This ensures continual improvement in process without waiting for a complete process reengineering.

No process can be perfect forever. The work environment changes, people, their knowledge, skills and temperaments change. The work culture undergoes change gradually. The financial conditions, the level of automation, the machines used and their efficiency and accuracy all change. It is important to periodically identify these changes having adverse impact on the processes and address them for maintaining efficiency and effectiveness.

Methodologies and tools:

Some of the process development/improvement methodologies and tools are listed below for reference:

• Value stream mapping

• Kaizen

• 5S model

• TQM 

• PDCA

• DMAIC

• Six Sigma

• Lean Process implementation

• Theory of constraints

• Root cause analysis

• Cause and effect diagram (analysis)

• Process mapping/modelling

• SIPOC analysis