Regular readers of our work may have come to know the value we place on process. As detailed in a previous blog on decision making, we feel that everything we do is driven by a process, regardless of the understanding the decision maker has of that process.
From an operations perspective, having little or no knowledge of the processes that exist doesn’t make them less impactful. It does make them impossible to control with any accuracy. Not controlling the activity of a shop floor does not remove the process. It just allows the process to be driven by the decisions of multiple folks on the floor. What seem to be random acts are usually motivated by something. Engineers and maintenance managers who understand predictive maintenance can attest to the fact that many things considered random are driven by mechanisms we have not attempted to understand. Just because we don’t see the reason doesn’t mean there is no reason.
In businesses making the transition from an entrepreneurial to a more mature state, there is difficulty in gaining control of the larger enterprise. Often, that difficulty is borne of the resistance to control the more complicated entity. We often hear that management doesn’t want to dampen the creativity that got them this far. That creativity does not necessarily become dampened. That creativity often can be magnified by removing the tasks that consume resources and occupy time that could be used to grow the business in significant ways. Removing randomness allows management to control the outcome of many situations. In reality, randomness is rarer than most realize. We use the term “statistical fluctuation” to acknowledge that. Thanks, Eli Goldratt.
Take for instance a business that does not want to implement a scheduling system to optimize manufacturing in a facility. The reason given is the operations manager’s preference to schedule the facility. His reason is that he can make changes on-the-fly to accommodate employee absenteeism, machine downtime and customer needs. This individual is smart and creative. But he has built a process (even though he states emphatically that process is the root of all evil) that requires he spend hours each day modifying a plan. If he were to spend those hours training and making employees feel like part of a team, driving a predictive maintenance program and managing the few exceptions caused by customer emergencies, he would have enough time left over to help define a structure that would quickly free him from those tasks.
The resistance to systems and process is self-generating. Those with negative experiences have been the victims of poor design. They have encountered ERP, WMS or other systems that were not created to support them. Any software adopted by a company should support well-defined business processes, not create the processes. Very little should be done to accommodate software systems. Those systems should support a well-conceived business process.
If a process is effective and designed correctly, software should be there to enhance or simplify it. Processes should be developed the way software is developed. There should be a clear definition of what the process should do, a careful study of all the constraints and required input, discussions with those impacted and thorough training on how to use it.
But much like bad software, bad processes only address the symptoms of business challenges. Bad processes can make things worse by adding unneeded overhead to an already arduous situation.
A process exists for everything. While it may not be visible, there is a structure to everything. Not defining or understanding a process just leaves us to be victims of its reign. Much like bad code in software, a poor or ignored process still exists and does what it does. And again, like software, the best process will only react to the inputs presented.
Those of a certain age know the term GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. Without understanding a process or managing the inputs, garbage will inevitably be the output. The best way to control the output is to control the process and inputs.