posted Oct 14, 2009, 11:11 PM by Post Master
[
updated Apr 7, 2011, 8:00 AM
]
Process modeling measures, analyses,
improves and controls characteristics of the business process in an
organization. It demands the commitment of everyone in the organization,
particularly high-level management, to achieve sustainable quality improvement.
It reasons that business success depends on reduction of process variation,
with continuous effort to establish stable and predictable process results.
The historical success of organizations
that implemented correct process modeling has made this topic a common practice
for all organizations that wish to optimize their performance; and with
increasing demand on health care information and limited financial resources,
health care organizations have followed suite of the major industries and are
now increasingly implementing these concepts.
Six Sigma,
christened after the statistical process capability studies, was originally a
set of practices to improve manufacturing process developed by Bill Smith at
Motorola in 1986. However, it has expanded in the two subsequent decades to
extend to other types of business processes as one of the most popular quality
improvement strategies.
The paper is divided to two main parts. The
first part presents a review of current
literature, showing the facts and issues of each concept. It introduces the Six
Sigma strategy and the Lean Manufacturing approach, and describes how the
combination of these, Lean Six Sigma, is used as a methodology for business
process management.
The SIPOC diagrams are then described in
further detail, pointing out how should each part (Supplier, Input, Process,
Output, and Customer) should be documented and described. The Swim lane
diagrams that depict the processes are then introduced and their expected
layout and properties discussed.
Once the processes are defined correctly by
the SIPOC diagrams, they need to be analysed. Value Stream Mapping and Quality
Stream Mapping are two of these tools that are described here as the last
section of the first part of this document.
The second part defines the metadata for
SIPOC diagrams. Here, tables demonstrate each data element that should be
recorded about each part of the system, and an example or a description is
presented to help specify that element correctly. A set of graphic icons is
represented at the end of the document to be used in process maps so that they
would all follow a uniform visual presentation.
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