Processes and Their Sequence

A process converts inputs into outputs using resources and controls. Managing by process rather than by department matters because defects concentrate at the boundaries between departments, which departmental management leaves unowned.

Three families

• Management processes — planning, objective setting, review, resourcing.
• Core processes — those that deliver the product or service and touch the customer: enquiry to order, design, planning, production, delivery, service.
• Support processes — maintenance, procurement, competence, calibration, document control, IT.

The process landscape

A single page showing the processes and the main flows between them is worth more than a shelf of procedures. It tells a new employee how the organisation works, shows where a requirement enters and where it leaves, and makes visible the processes with no owner.

Getting the granularity right

Too few processes and the map says nothing; too many and it becomes an organisation chart in disguise. A practical test is that each process should have a single owner with the authority to change it, a definable output with a customer, and a measure of its performance. Where you cannot name all three, the boundary is probably drawn wrongly.

If two departments each believe the other owns a step, that step is where your next nonconformity will come from.