Steve Beeler

You have a goal…I have a way to get you there.

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Business Process Mapping

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Business process mapping answers the who, where, when, and how questions about what actually happens inside your company. They can range from relatively narrow questions (how are credit applications approved?) to more comprehensive questions (how is a customer enquiry turned into a factory work order?)

business process mapping

While a business process can be complicated, business process mapping itself is straightforward. Here’s how:

Only three elements are required:

(1) A box captures a process step. A typical business process will have dozens or more steps from start to finish. Write process steps in a “do something” format (“Review Credit Application”).

(2) A diamond captures a decision point. They are often written as questions (“Credit Approved?” or “OK?”). Yes goes one way, no goes another. Diamonds are very important as they are often the start of rework loops. In our credit approval example, an incomplete credit application (a quality defect) will have to be sent back for missing information, a waste of both time and money.

(3) A triangle captures inventory. In our credit approval example, there is a queue of applications (electronic or paper) ahead of the analyst. Where inventory collects in a business process is a great clue as to where the constraint (bottleneck) resides. Break the bottleneck, and the throughput of the entire business process is improved.

Connect these elements in process logic and you have a business process map. A brainstorm session with sticky notes on a white board is a great way to get started. Map your existing process first. Take a picture with your cell phone…this is your current state process. Now for the continuous improvement. Experiment (move things around, add or delete steps, change approval authorizations, change acceptance levels, etc) until you have a nimble and robust business process.

As an example of business process mapping, here is a redacted portion of the upstream “sales funnel” for a manufacturer of custom products:

Sales Funnel map

Business process mapping is a great training aide. There is no better way to visualize how a new employee’s roles and responsibilities fit into the bigger picture.

Need some help?  Click HERE for my contact page.

Project Management Tools

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Project Management

Project management is a mix of art and science. Here are three project management tools that you should have in your toolkit. None are complicated and together they provide breadth and depth in project definition, design, and control.

Project Plan

A critical early (if not first!) step in project management is to paint a picture of the project: who, what, where, when, and how. The more complete the picture, the more likely is success.

The project plan describes the project in its entirety: deliverables, timing, people, market and financial analyses, etc. This document goes by a variety of names. A business plan for a startup. A product direction letter for a new gizmo. A statement of work for software installation.

I outline my project plans in Word. Outlines are fast. Fast to write. Fast to read. Fast to edit. Fast to change.

What differs from one situation to another are the main project headings.

Fourteen headings were needed to paint the picture of the FF50th, a large event that a I recently managed: Objectives, When and Where, Leadership Team, Car Eligibility, Tire Rules, Driver Eligibility, and so on.

Another set of headings were needed for a cleantech startup: Executive Summary, Market Opportunity, Technology, Product, Competition, Management Team, Business Model, Manufacturing Plan, Financials, Risks, etc.

Now that everyone sees the big picture, the next tool is a Gantt chart to break the project down into sequential and parallel workstreams.

Gantt Chart

A Gantt chart is a great way to visualize project tasks: start dates, end dates, what can be done in parallel, what must be done in sequence. Here’s how to build one:How to Build a Gantt Chart

A Gantt chart is a matrix of tasks and time. As few as two dozen tasks are often enough. Depending on project duration, time increments can be in days, weeks, or months.

I do Gantt charts in Excel. List tasks down the left in start date order. If two or more tasks start on the same date, use end dates to break ties. Simply fill cells between start / finish dates with the color of your choice to illustrate task timing.

Write Gantt chart line items in a “do something” format: design logo, assemble prototype, etc. Pairing an action with an object provides clear, concise task definition. Building in milestones or touchpoints is a great way to keep everyone focused on project deliverables and moving forward.

The depth of a Gantt chart in a time period indicates how many tasks must be worked on simultaneously. If your Gantt chart goes vertical, spread out the work.

Any line item on the Gantt chart that requires an invention, regulatory approval, or some other significant uncertainty must be managed carefully. I pull risky line items as far forward as possible to provide extra time. No Rube Goldberg stuff on my critical path!

Next tool: a punch list with detailed who, what, and when assignments.

Punch List

Like a Gantt chart, a punch list is a matrix with tasks down the left. That’s where the similarity ends. While a Gantt chart provides big-picture visualization, a punch list captures specific assignments. Here’s how to build one:How to Build a Punch List

I also do punch lists in Excel. List tasks down the left. Order is not important…the tasks will be sorted many times as the project moves forward. Write punch list line items in a “do something” format to provide clear, concise task definition. Punch list tasks will be much more specific than the workstreams on your Gantt chart.

Each line item will have columns to capture its status, who it is assigned to, and when it is due. The comments capture recent actions, next steps, agreements, decisions, and other news. This is the project’s memory…write good comments and update them frequently!

A risk column can highlight higher risk tasks. Uncertainty demands extra attention. Get an early start on these items and watch them like a hawk.

I like a countdown to the project’s due date front and center…the clock is ticking!

A punch list can grow unwieldy with additional line items as a project moves forward. Color coding and sorting help highlight what needs attention and when.

Project Management Tools

Turn your project management into more science than art with these three project management tools.  Fast and nimble, you can always know where you are and what you need to be working on next.

Do you have a project to manage? Click HERE to ping me. I will be happy to help you set up your project management tools.

Sales Funnel

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The Sales Funnel is at the core of business development. Theory of Constraints and Lean Thinking are manufacturing fundamentals. Good things happen when these concepts intersect.

Sales Funnel

Start by mapping your sales funnel from the beginning. What are the steps from contact to lead to prospect to customer? Capture decision points and criteria to qualify leads and prospects. Document rework loops where steps are repeated…and why. Note IT systems utilized along the way. This long chain of events will be cross-functional: credit approval in finance, feasibility in engineering, costing in purchasing, etc.

Next collect flow metrics: numbers of leads and prospects, conversion rates to quotes and orders, days and dollars in funnel, etc.

At a level of abstraction, your process map is beginning to look a lot like a factory…because it is! The sales funnel converts leads into customers just like a factory converts raw materials into finished products. Both have capacity constraints. Both are full of waste. Both can be improved through Theory of Constraints and Lean Thinking.

Consider a case study.

A client company was in a business that designed, manufactured, and installed mostly custom products. Its sales funnel was a project management process that included site renderings, permitting, and electromechanical design. While there was a backlog of outstanding quotes, the company’s factory was often waiting for orders. Could the flow through the project management process (aka sales funnel) be improved?

Here is a redacted portion of the company’s very complex sales funnel that incorporates the entire span of project management activities through installation:

Sales Funnel map

From this map, short-term bottleneck actions were identified to reduce waiting, rework, and overprocessing:

• Publish standards for weights and measures
• Refine pre-production status codes
• Scrub standard product catalog to eliminate pricing errors
• Expedite new customer credit approvals
• Increase visibility of long-lead items
• Standardize permitting process
• Identify key jurisdiction permitting contacts
• Provide building codes and standards training

Longer term, project management software was implemented to further improve the linkage (and communication) between upstream project management and downstream purchasing and manufacturing.

Operations engineering tools like Theory of Constraints and Lean Thinking are not just for factories.  When applied business processes, in this case the Sales Funnel, more money comes out and faster.  What’s not to like about that?

For more on this topic, click HERE for a great blog post with examples of effective sales funnels.

5S

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Lean thinking is not just for factories. 5S is an easy to implement process to organize any workplace. With a little pro bono coaching, my new friends at Holland Physical Therapy have completed their first 5S project. Here’s how we did it:

5S

We started out with this quick one-page lesson in 5S, the seven wastes, and Plan-Do-Check-Act. As you might expect from its name, 5S is a five-step process. It is a pathway to a clean, uncluttered, organized workplace reducing waste and improving productivity:

1) Sort
2) Set In Order
3) Shine
4) Standardize
5) Sustain

Introducing the seven wastes (defects, overproduction, transportation, waiting, inventory, motion, and over processing) sharpened the focus on waste reduction. Introducing the Plan-Do-Check-Act continuous improvement cycle reinforced 5S as on on-going, every day commitment, not a one-time event.

Next, with a shared understanding of terminology and principles, we did a quick walk through of the clinic. Five of the seven wastes seemed to apply the clinic’s lack of organization…we could not find examples of overproduction and over processing. Cleanliness was not an issue. However, the Holland Physical Therapy team was greatly concerned about not finding something when needed and the time wasted looking for it.

The cable column was selected as the initial application area.

We first sorted through the area and set aside what was not needed. Then we organized and labeled everything used at the cable column. Masking tape was used to temporarily identify parking spots for the many accessories. The team agreed to sustain the cable column 5S through an end of day tidy up: anything out of place would be put back to where it belongs. After a day or so, the team assessed the area, made improvements, and moved onto the next 5S application area. P-D-C-A.

5S Group Photo

Through 5S, the team at Holland Physical Therapy is on their way to better utilize their space and easily find what they need when they need it.

Checklists

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My motorsports hobby runs on checklists. Checklists provide three essential functions before and during a race weekend: communicate work instructions, provide visual confirmation, and increase my available bandwidth. That’s quite a bit from a few sheets of paper on clipboards!

Here are three of my most valuable checklists:

Race Weekend Packing List. It takes a lot of parts and tools to operate a race car, even a relatively simple one like a Formula Ford. The Race Weekend Packing List, of course, lists everything that is to be loaded into the trailer. Every race weekend is a little different, so an “Added Starters” section allows for flexibility: extra sun screen and Gatorade in July, sweat shirts and hot chocolate mix in October. The primary purpose of the Race Weekend Packing List is to ensure that nothing is forgotten. It is so much easier to check these boxes in the shop than to be at the race track without something!

Checklists

Lola T-540 Checklist. This comprehensive, three-page checklist organizes the preparation of the car. Unlike the Packing List, the Lola T-540 Checklist has multiple columns. In the shop, everything is checked off to ensure that the car is race ready. At the track, not every nut and bolt must be checked before each session. Line items that must be checked off (lug nuts, tire pressures, fuel, body fasteners, etc) are left blank, those not needing attention that session are hashed out. The work content in each column is different, reflecting required maintenance frequencies. Across the columns and down the rows, the Lola T-540 Checklist outlines the maintenance plan for the weekend and visually confirms the readiness of the car. This example from the FF50th took on quite a bit of rain…

Hewland Mk9 gear change with checklist

Hewland Mk9 Gear Change Checklist. Every so often, the decision is made to change gears at the race track. No need to panic. The long column of the left lists all the parts and supplies that will be needed. The other four columns outline the steps required to disassemble the gearbox, sub-assemble with the new gears, and then put the whole thing back together again. Included in the assembly instructions are torque specs and error-proofing steps. This checklist facilitates teamwork and provides detailed, sequenced work instructions, both very welcome when time is short. With an exploded drawing for reference, everything is under control.
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Can you use checklists in your plant, office, or clinic? Almost certainly. I use them in my day job, too. One that comes immediately to mind is the 30-question checklist I use to perform operations assessments. Here’s a quick checklist for checklists:

Do you need to ensure that essential items are not forgotten?
Do you need to ensure that critical tasks are not missed?
Do you need to provide detailed, sequenced work instructions?
Do you need to coordinate multiple people?
Do you need to know the status of work in process?

And how do checklists increase my available bandwidth? Thinking is done back at the shop. At the track, my team knows what to do, when to do it, and has the parts, tools, and supplies needed. A quick glance through the checklists and I know all is well. I can focus on driving the car. You will enjoy the peace of mind, too.

Want to learn more about checklists? Here’s a great book: The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.