PROCESS OPTIMIZATION
Process Assessment & Capability Analysis
The best companies take a disciplined approach to compare their processes against a set of well-defined criteria to determine capability of performing within service, quality, and financial targets.
These are known as ‘performance standards’ for excellence.
The performance standard is set by the team after consulting with customers, industry requirements, the competitive environment, the business’ needs and legal/regulatory requirements.
Determining process capability will allow you to:
- Quantify the ability of your process to produce output that meets the performance standard.
- Establish a baseline for comparing the improvement of the product or process over time.
- Compare your process against another (internally and externally) to judge relative performance.
- Differences between short & long-term process capability can tell you how to address performance by either controlling the process vs. implementing new technology.
Additional Items
Key Questions
- Has your team captured an accurate picture of your organization’s current state of operations and compared that picture against a ‘best practice’?
- Do you have the right information to close performance gaps and create a plan that will yield a cost-effective process that is sustainable and operating at optimum level?
- Do you understand how the system performs in comparison to the performance standard?
- Does your process show signs of special causes of variation, meaning it’s wildly variable and unpredictable leading to unpredictable results?
- Can I perform a process capability analysis if the process is not yet under control?