Chapter 7

PROCESS APPROACH

There will be no output without input

.

INTRODUCTION

PRoblems occur in the organization,not because of the employees,but because of

the failure of management to foresee the importance of a system in the
organization.A system can be established correctly only if the organization realize
the activities from receiving materials till delivery to costumer as a set of
process.

Product and Service Quality Depend on Process

Traditionally,manufacturing and service organizations were measuring,confirming
and analyzing quality with reference to the final product alone.They check only
the quality of the final products.They were so unscientifically that they could not
definitely say whether a product would pass or not based on how they performed
or how the processes were controlled.Any amount of inspection of the product is
not going to improve the quality of the product.Process orientation is the right to
be adopted for practicing quality as well as management of organizations so that
the producer can be certain about the quality of the products or services even
before the final inspection

Process Orientation Helps in Finding Defects Early

Quality should be built into the product or service right from the early stages.If a
defect cannot be corrected early in the process,it cannot be removed at the final
stages.Therrfore,every employee should be educated to understand the activity
they are performing in terms of processes.Such an orientation should be
inculcated in the organization by training and coaching of the employees to
visualize products as output of clearly distinguishable processes.

MODEL FOR PROCESS DEFINITION

The process model is quite simple.It contains three clearly distinguishable
elements,as given below:

1.Input/s to the process

The various inputs required for any process are:
(A) Bills of materials
(B) Specification for each material
(C) Requirements gor the inspection for the incoming materials
(D) Procedure for receipt of materials

2.Output/s of the process

The output process consist of the following:
(A) The products or service to be delivered
(B) Documents to be delivered
(C) The specifications for all the above
(D) Method of measurements for verifying conformance to the specification
(E) Criteria for acceptance / rejection
3.The process or task

Value Addition in the Process

Every otganization attains profit only through value addition to its process.The
process may need machinery,infrastracture or techniques for achieving the
desired value addition as per the goals and objectives of the process.They should
also be trained adequately ,so that they are able to handle the process withour
constant supervision.They should also be given guidelines for handling
wmergencies.They should also be educated and trained monitoring the process
parameters and carrying out preventive maintenance themselves or at least in
identifying when the process is out of order,or likely to be.

ETX MODEL
The most popular process model is ETX as shown in Fig. 7.1:

ENTR TASK EXI

Y
INPUT OUTPUT T

ETX MODEL
FIGURE 7.1
ETX stands for Entry,Task and Exit.
Entry - Conditions to be satisfied before the task undertaken
Exit - Conditions to be fullfield before the task is considered as completed.
Task - Value adding process

Training for Process Orientation

The most important requirement for transforming the employees from the
product
orientation is training and coaching.Employees should also be given an overview
of the entire process with flowchart of the process in the organization.They
should also be helped to identify their costumers and suppliers and coached as
how to conduct themselves in the roles of costumers as well as suppliers.

Measure Process
Before giving a go ahead for normal production,the process parameters should
be studied,statistically analysis and only then the process should be authorized
for normal deployment.This will improved the confidence of the process owners
as well as that of their customers and suppliers.Control of the process is very
important and the process owner should take the responsibility for the same.
Improve Process Continuously
In line with TQM philosophy,the process should be improved continuosly.Efforts
should be put in for continuous process imrovement.This will help manufacturing
or service organization to achieve much higher yields.

SUBBURAJ'S 6S MODEL FOR PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

STUDY
The current performance level of the process triggers improvement.It could be
the defects found(both internal and external),cycle time achieve,customer
feedback/complaint,employee feedback,customer waiting time,hassles of the
employees or costumers,etc.

Streamline
Streamlining means that the process should offer the least resistance to motion
in tge organization.Quite often,some processes cause delays or hassles leading
to problems either to the costumer or to the employee.

Simplify
Once the essential process are identified,they are to be simplified.One should
always question wheter the current procedure is effecient?Are there no better
methods?There has to be a constant quest for simplifying the processes.For
instance,the otganization was making three copies of the test reports- one for the
customer,one for use as a duplicate and third as a record.

Standardize
Standardization essentially permits performing the process in the same way by
every employee at all times.Therefore,it requires a documented procedure.

Synergize
No process is a stand-alone activity in any organization.A process may interact
with at least two other processes-customer and supplier processes.During this
phase a perfect synergy is worked out between this process and other processes
interacting with it.It may lead to fine tuning of the modified process,in some
cases.

Strengthen
During this phase,a number of activities are carried out;
.● Educating and convincing the process owners,their customers and suppliers
● Periodic counseseling and assuring that the new process will perform better
than the old
process
● Monitoring the results and confirming that the process transition has
occured,the employees
are confident and that the process us practiced as documented.

CUSTOMER SUPPLIER CHAINS

Increased Inspection Add Cost,Not Value

Customer supplier chains have to be established for building quality into the
products and services.
Traditional enterprises could recognize external customers and external suppliers
only.They could only visualize customers and suppliers outside their
organizations.It should be the aim of the organization to reduce the inspection to
the least possible and still should be able to have control over the quality of the
products or services.

Identify Internal Customers and Suppliers

When the quality concepts,particularly the quality system concepts evolved,it
was realized that quality has to be built into the products or services through
building quality into the processes.The fundamental requirement for building
quality into the process is having continuous control over the quality of the
processes so that quality is ensured at all stages in the process.

Customer-supplier Chains
Costumer-supplier chain is nothing but,dividing the entire process of
manufacturing or providing services,starting from external supplier and ending at
the external customer into the number of clearly defined sub-processes in the
organization.Each sub-process has an owner,who actually is responsible for
giving an output to internal customers after receiving the right inputs from
internal suppliers and adding value.
As discussed,all inputs to sub-processes should have specifications.Each output
should have specification.It could also be a detailed performance
check,depending on the critically of the item.This will bring in consciousness of
quality throughout the organization and requirement of each process will get
defined very accurately and precisely.