Optimizing processes — what to consider when improving workflows

This rapid progress means that processes no longer stay constant over longer periods and have to be scrutinized continually. Companies able to keep improving their business processes and respond to changing customer needs have a decisive advantage over their competitors. That is one reason why the various methods of process optimization are being used more and more widely. This blog post gives an overview of those methods.

Prerequisites and framework conditions

To run successful improvement management with a focus on the continuous optimization of processes, the right conditions have to be created first and a lasting improvement culture established. These are:

The most important prerequisite for successful improvement management is anchoring and actively living a cooperative corporate culture. That covers all the values, norms and attitudes shaping the decisions, actions and daily conduct of everyone in the company. It is equally crucial that management actively sets an example for these values and expects them of others.

Before existing workflows can be optimized and made more efficient, stable and standardized process documentation is needed. It provides the starting point for carrying out improvements. A key success factor is measuring process quality using metrics. Visual dashboards from Peakboard can be used for this, for example, showing irregularities simply and understandably.

Continuously improving workflows without involving employees is doomed from the outset. The people who handle the tasks every day know the existing problem areas best and are aware of the difficulties in daily work. It is decisive to create suitable platforms that encourage exchange between everyone involved and set the frame for change.

Methods of process optimization

The first systematic steps toward making production processes more efficient were taken as early as the end of the 19th century. The engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor developed a system that focused heavily on standardizing workflows and the conditions needed for them. With the introduction of assembly line production in 1913, Henry Ford was the first to apply the approach on a large scale, pursuing the goal of building an affordable car for everyone. Various methods have been developed since then, all of them focused on optimizing workflows. Here is a summary of the most important ones:

Kaizen: Taiichi Ohno worked as an engineer and production manager at Toyota in Japan after the Second World War. He developed Henry Ford's concept further and integrated it consistently into Toyota's corporate philosophy. In Japanese, “Kai” means change and “Zen” means for the better, so “Kaizen” means change for the better. Kaizen relies on continuous improvement of processes, with the aim of increasing customer satisfaction and reducing waste. Processes are optimized step by step in workshops led by Kaizen coaches, together with the employees involved in the process.

The Six Sigma method was developed in the USA in the 1990s by Bill Smith, an engineer and scientist at Motorola. It relies on a pronounced mathematical approach and the statistical measurement of data to assess the performance of production processes and their outputs. Improvement initiatives tackled with Six Sigma are handled as improvement projects, with the employees involved in the process taking part under the direction of trained Six Sigma experts.

The business reengineering approach was also developed in the USA in the 1990s. Unlike the methods of continuous improvement, it is not about optimizing existing workflows. The focus is on radically redesigning the key business processes, including the corporate organization that has grown around them. Business reengineering asks how the work ahead can be organized most efficiently given today's market requirements and the latest technological opportunities. Information technology plays a central role in this.

Agile methods: the agile approach is not an improvement method in the strict sense but rather a holistic management philosophy. The focus is on the wishes of the customer base, which are to be met quickly and at high quality thanks to a flat, dynamic organization and short internal decision paths. It originates in software development and is based on the Agile Manifesto with its twelve underlying principles. Projects following the agile approach are implemented using the Scrum method, for example. The Scrum team is at the center and works through the individual work packages of the project in so-called sprints.

Supporting tools for process optimization

Various tools support the implementation of improvement initiatives. All of them rely on a strong visual component with the aim of making data, figures and facts visible, and they are ideal for use in group workshops. Two examples:

The spaghetti diagram is used to record the routes walked and the transports carried out, and to represent them visually in a simple way. The finished chart shows how often the observed employees head for a particular place and which routes they cover within the observation period. The spaghetti diagram can also be used to represent material flows in production. That way the paths of the material can be captured and layout improvements made visible.

Process mapping is a tool for visually representing an existing workflow and identifying the fields of action within it. The individual work steps are assigned to the roles involved, meaning people or departments. Responsibilities and waste can be presented transparently this way. In its various forms, process mapping is also known under other names such as process flow diagram, value stream analysis or swim lane chart.

Anchoring improvements through visualization

What decides the lasting effect of jointly developed improvements is anchoring the changes in the processes and monitoring them on an ongoing basis. This can be ensured as follows:

• Review the lasting effect of the improvements made, together with the employees involved, around four weeks after the improvement project ends.
• Define KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure process quality.
• Track the defined KPIs to spot irregularities in the production process quickly. Peakboard's dashboards help here by making the data visible directly in production and raising awareness among the employees involved.

Practical tips

Implementing an improvement initiative successfully starts with precise preparation and an exact description of the existing problem. A few tips for everyday work:

• Define the scope of the improvement clearly before the workshop. Otherwise there is a risk of endless discussion and losing the thread. Better to tackle several small topics separately than one big topic at once.
• Even if certain optimizations seem obvious right at the start of the workshop, it is important that no steps are skipped. That prevents premature measures being taken and important fields of action being overlooked.
• Once the optimizations have been introduced, it is important to check that they work and to make adjustments where necessary.

Making processes visible and optimizing them with dashboards

With Peakboard, process-relevant metrics are put in the right light on individual dashboards and displayed in a visually appealing, understandable way. That gives every employee exactly the information they need to make well-founded decisions and to intervene when the running process is disrupted.
Peakboard's interactivity also offers the option of interacting with the visualization directly via a touchscreen. Besides a more self-directed way of working, that has the advantage for operators that work progress can be transferred straight into the system without manual transfer. It saves time and reduces the risk of errors. Our templates give you the inspiration you need for your first dashboard.

Note: all text and illustrations presented in this blog post are taken from the book Prozessoptimierung als ganzheitlicher Ansatz by Martin Hofmann, published by Springer Verlag in 2020.

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