Process Redesign — A 2-Day Course

 Open Public Course Closed In-House Course

Course Synopsis

• Are you a member of a process redesign team and want to learn from experts how to go about understanding and improving your business processes?
• Do you understand the major approaches to process modelling so that you can select the most appropriate technique for your circumstances?
• Can you facilitate a group to produce a model of a business process that clearly shows where the bottlenecks are and makes clear the pain?
• Do you want to know how to add meaningful metrics to a process model?
• Are you confident that you can identify the core causes of process problems?
• Would you find it helpful to see successful and repeatable methods of moving from an understanding of the AS-IS process to a range of TO-BE options?
• Do you know how to select between alternative improvement options?

If the answer is "YES" - this is the course for you!

All organisations need to drive processes that exceed expectations and delight customers - this highly interactive and in-depth course gives you the tools and knowledge to make that a reality.

We work through a series of structured exercises supported by a detailed case study. This course provides you with the skills necessary to select and apply appropriate methodologies, tools and techniques for specifying, evaluating, modelling, measuring, cost justifying and redesigning cross functional business processes.

This in-depth training introduces the terminology involved, describes the main stages of a process transformation initiative and provides an understanding of the organisational and human dimensions of process redesign.

Course Objectives

On completion of this training course, delegates will:

• Understand process mapping techniques and the advantages and disadvantages of using each
• Work as a team to map simple and more complex processes
• Recognise that process mapping is both an analysis method that allows you to gain personal understanding but is also an ideal communication device that allows you to build a consensus of how things really function
• Understand a step-by-step method of ensuring that you define the process, measure its current performance, analyse the reasons for variation and failure, develop and prioritise improvement actions and establish control mechanisms to ensure that the process functions better in the future. (In the world of Six Sigma this step by step method is termed DMAIC)
• Learn to peel away process symptoms to reveal underlying root causes of poor performance.
• Understand how to build options for improvement from the evidence of current performance.
• Design and communicate new process visions and models.

In the Practical Workshops, students will:

• Gain experience in using a variety of techniques to model a business process
• Practice at facilitating a small group in the identification of the key steps in a process. Learn to differentiate between symptoms and root causes when examining process problems
• Practice identifying meaningful process metrics and adding them to a process model in a manner that illustrates clearly where the 'hot spots' are in a process.
• Gain experience at reviewing process models and determining where greater clarity is needed
• Use the process design principles to generate options for improving a given process
• Present the products of your analysis in a persuasive and articulate manner that contrasts the current pain with the potential gain
• Practice giving and receiving feedback (praise and criticism) in a powerful yet positive way

Intended Audience

This course is suitable for:

• Anyone who needs to be able to model business processes or review the products of a process improvement team.
• Managers who need to understand how the processes they are responsible for are performing and be able to select the most appropriate way of improving their performance.
• Any member of a process improvement team who needs to understand the tools, techniques and underpinning principles of process modelling and improvement.

Benefits for your Company

Often the first and biggest step towards process improvement is to document how current process should operate in order to ensure that all involved understand both how they can individually contribute to success and how their potential non-compliance can have adverse consequences. Having a set of clear, but simply understood, process models is an ideal starting point for establishing a consensus of how we do things and how we could aspire to do things even better.

Benefits for You

You learn and practice techniques that enable you to accurately map any business process. You will be able to assess the current health of a process and identify the most critical ailments.

You will have proven techniques that you can apply to help you prioritise where to target your improvement effort and will be able to use your process models to build a consensus for change. You will be able to help set new benchmarks for performance and advice on how these can be implemented and monitored.

Publicly scheduled dates, locations, and prices

Outline Course Contents

Introduction & Welcome

You will meet like-minded people and share your reasons for wanting to be on the course.

An experienced, friendly trainer will help you visualise where you want this course to take you.

The context for business process improvement

This first session looks at how business processes evolved in our organisations and why we do some of the things we do. We briefly examine the major trends in process improvement by looking at the aims of the Total Quality Movement (TQM), Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), Cycle Time Reduction (CTR), Six Sigma, Lean thinking and manufacturing.

Identifying business processes

• Definition of a business process
• Differences between the process view and the functional view of an organisation
• Advantages of the process view
• Importance of metrics
• Value chain analysis
• Relationships between processes
• Building an organisational view of processes
• Employ a modelling technique to identify the high level business processes from a detailed case study

Modelling business processes

We examine in some detail the various process modelling techniques starting with simple process maps and flow charts, moving on to swim lane diagrams and moving on to more complex activity diagrams. In each case we look at modelling notation and conventions.

Each modelling technique will be individually reinforced through structured exercises and then the whole process will be practiced in a team centred case study.

Adding metrics and analysing process performance

Once we have a built a model of the as-is business processes that all can agree upon we can go on to add performance metrics, identify problems areas and hotspots. We introduce and practice a range of problem analysis techniques which will help to identify; inappropriate workflows, handoffs, non-value added and waste activities.

We go back into case study and add performance measures to the as-is model that we produced. We identify and prioritise key areas where improvement could take place and prepare and brief management on our findings and recommendations.

Moving from as-is to to-be

We introduce techniques to generate process improvement alternatives. We introduce process design principles and create a range of to-be scenarios. We look at benchmarking as a means of setting process performance targets and set stretch goals for our process improvement initiative. We produce a set of to-be process maps; examine the feasibility and organisational risk involved in implementing the preferred solution.

The teams complete the mapping of the to-be process for the case study and prepare a management presentation to seek approval to implement the programme of improvement.