Quantitative Process Maps
A Concept for Prioritization of Business Process Improvement Projects
Christina Thomas and Timo Nuyken
Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of RWTH Aachen University, Steinbachstraße 19,
52074 Aachen, Germany
Keywords: Quantitative Process Map, Process Optimization, Business Process Management.
Abstract: Modern large-scale companies are facing the challenge of how to prioritize improvement projects for
business processes. This article offers a concept on how to approach this challenge using quantitative
process maps. For the process maps treemaps are used, visualizing the most important processes of a
company and the degree of needed change. Inside the article, the way to build up the process map, deriving
important processes from the strategy and evaluating them regarding risks, maturity level, key performance
indicators and given improvement ideas from idea management, is described. The paper also offers a
concept for building up responsibilities and structuring the yearly process for process optimization.
1 INTRODUCTION
Process optimization is part of the continuous and
discontinuous improvement of all companies.
Within the companies there is the question of how to
prioritize process optimization in order to efficiently
and effectively use existing resources to conduct
process improvement projects. This paper presents
the concept of quantitative process maps to support
companies to prioritize process improvements.
The next paragraph explains what would be
needed to set up a quantitative process map. Starting
with the prioritization of process improvements in
the first step transparency over the processes of the
company is needed. But actual process maps, giving
an overview over the processes of a company on top
level, are often unstructured and in many cases they
contain functions instead of processes. And even if
the process map contains processes those processes
often do not include the relevant interfaces, which is
a lack of structure.
In the second step the most important processes
have to be derived. There are some methods for
identification of core processes based on strategy
and risks, but the connection to the process map is
missing in general. Besides most methods focus on
core processes in terms of value adding processes,
but support and management processes might also
be highly relevant.
The third step contains an evaluation of the
processes to identify the needed degree of change.
Existing methods for evaluation do consider
maturity level, key performance indicators and needs
for improvement out of the idea management but
separated and not as an integrated top-down and
bottom-up concept.
Within the fourth step the results are visualized.
The visualization for example using a state of the art
process map is only qualitative but quantitative
aspects are missing. Therefor the concept presented
in this article is using a treemap for quantitative
visualization.
2 STATE OF THE ART
Within this section the requirements of companies
and their existing concepts for prioritization of
process improvements are described. Afterwards the
concepts, that can be found in literature, are
described and evaluated regarding the fulfilment of
the requirements of the companies.
2.1 Requirements and Concepts of
Companies
The concept presented in this article is a result of
research done at the author’s institute including the
recently finished benchmarking study on lean
441
Thomas C. and Nuyken T..
Quantitative Process Maps - A Concept for Prioritization of Business Process Improvement Projects.
DOI: 10.5220/0005173404410446
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing (KMIS-2014), pages 441-446
ISBN: 978-989-758-050-5
Copyright
c
2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
administration and different industrial projects.
Within the benchmarking study the lean, continuous
improvement and process management staff units of
mostly large-scale companies were examined. In
total 56 companies did take part via questionnaire.
12 companies were interviewed by phone and 6
companies where visited personally for information
exchange.
One of the main challenges of those staff units in
indirect areas is the improvement of processes.
There are different concepts used for improvements.
A few highly developed companies use adequate
process maps in combination with maturity models
and process monitoring tools. But in most of the
companies the decision for process improvement is
driven by problems within daily business. It can be
stated, that structured concepts for prioritization of
process optimizations are missing within industry.
Figure 1 gives an example for a process map of a
high developed company out of the benchmarking
study. The process map is structured into
management, core and support processes and
contains end-to-end processes.
Figure 1: Process Map (Benchmarking Lean
Administration, 2014).
In praxis, companies are evaluating opportunities
and risks as part of the annual report. Out of those
opportunities and risks the requirements for process
changes can be derived. For example Bayer is
describing in its annual report the opportunities of
the company’s innovation capability (Bayer, 2012)
which should result in the optimization of the
development and time-to-market process. On the
other hand there are risks mentioned. There are
legal, financial, IT, regulatory and other risks
described. Those risks might also be taken into
account when thinking about process changes. But
often, companies do change processes because there
are problems occurring in daily business. Priorities
for optimization should consider top down input.
Within the last years, shopfloor management
concepts including regular, at least weekly, meetings
and visual management as well as problem solving
processes, were implemented into indirect areas. But
most often the connection to process improvements
is missing. There is a good opportunity to include
bottom up input also from idea management.
The benchmarking study also showed, that most
of the successful companies did already set up staff
units for improvement activities but the focus on
business process improvement is often missing.
The requirements from companies regarding the
prioritization of process optimization projects are
summed up in figure 2:
Figure 2: Requirements of companies (Benchmarking
Lean Administration, 2014).
2.2 Concepts in Literature
The relevant literature has been analysed regarding
the requirements of the companies. There is only
little academic research in the area of process maps
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for whole companies (Dumas, 2013) but there are
different concepts which can be used for structuring
companies by processes. One of the most popular
concepts is the Value Chain by Porter (Porter, 1985),
differentiating between core und support processes.
There are other concepts taking also into account the
environment of the company. One of those concepts
is the New St.Galler Management Model (Bleicher,
2011), which is considering different stakeholders
and other categories. This concept is especially
useful, because it offers the possibility to connect the
processes to the strategy. And of course the strategy
of a company is one major driver for process
changes and improvements. If for example a
competitor is getting better and better regarding
delivery times, out of the risk of loosing market
shares the strategy of the company might result in
also shortening delivery times considering an
optimization of the order fulfillment process.
In addition to the top level approaches, there are
different concepts for process improvements
including reengineering concepts. These concepts
are not directly focussing on prioritization of process
optimizations, but they do partly contain process
selection and process derivation from strategy.
Figure 3: Key business processes of British Telecom
(Davenport, 1993).
Within the concept of process innovation
(Davenport, 1993) the appropriate number of major
processes is set between 10 and 20 in order to make
each process small enough to be understood. This
range also allows to distinguish into operational and
management processes, which might be redesigned
in a different way. Davenport gives an example of
key business processes of British Telecom on level 1
and level 2, which can be seen in Figure 3.
Davenport describes the need for transparency
and structure about processes on top level, but does
not give any information on how to reach it.
The concept of business reengineering (Hammer
und Champy, 1993) states, that decision for the right
processes for optimization is not easy but it is
important, because no company can improve all
relevant processes at the same time. Therefore,
three criteria for selecting the right processes for
reengineering are used:
processes with problems
processes with high importance to the
customers
processes where redesign is feasible
The following examples are given: A product
development process which has developed no new
products for five years is dysfunctional. The bigger
the process and the higher the costs are the more
likely it is, that the reengineering fails. It is stated
that there is no description of a formal approach for
selection of processes for reengineering and that
management could also ask other questions, for
example regarding the strategic relevance of a
process or the importance for customer satisfaction
or regarding performance in comparison to other
competitors (Hammer und Champy, 1993). Within
the concept of business reengineering the selection
of processes has to be done mainly based on
experience.
Davenport says, that the selection process is
crucial to the success of innovation efforts
(Davenport, 1993). He names five key activities in
identifying processes:
Enumerate major processes
Determine process boundaries
Assess strategic relevance of each process
Render high-level judgements of the "health"
of each process
Qualify the culture and politics of each
process
The first two steps can be understood as creating
transparency about existing processes. The third step
“assess strategic relevance of each process” is the
first part of process selection. Within process
selection Davenport names four criteria:
The process's centrality to the execution of the
firm's business strategy
process health
process qualification and
manageable project scope
He also gives some examples:
If the strategy of a company is the improvement
of relationships with customers. The company will
QuantitativeProcessMaps-AConceptforPrioritizationofBusinessProcessImprovementProjects
443
want to provide superior customer service, and
therefor will select processes at the customer
interface for innovation.
The selection on basis of health includes
evaluation of work-in-process, responsibilities and
number of interfaces.
The last point in process selection is the process
qualification, where the cultural and political climate
of a target process is evaluated. There should be a
sponsor and real business need for improvement
(Davenport, 1993).
Davenport also, like Hammer and Champy,
states, that it is important to take an organization’s
capabilities and resources into account. He says, that
most companies cannot successfully deal with
several process innovation projects at the same time
(Davenport, 1993).
In comparison to Hammer and Champy,
Davenport lays a stronger focus on evaluation of
processes and bottom up input for process selection.
The concept of business process reengineering
by Johansson focusses on process selection within
the discover phase (Johansson, 1993). The phase
consists of the four steps: mobilize, assess, select
and engage.
After Johansson a multifunctional team has to be
set up, then the strategy has to be confirmed,
identifying, what is driving the competitive
advantage. To achieve transparency process
mapping needs to be done getting a high level
definition of core business processes and key
supporting processes. Afterwards the appraisal of
current performance and assessment of culture have
to be done. The decision on core business processes
for change is then driven by high-level vision
“where we’d like to be” and what core business
processes are the key drivers to get there?
Johansson names a number of tools to filter out
high payoff process improvements from the high
level process map. These include such internal
evaluations as value-added analysis, a first-level
quality function deployment, profitability analysis,
and marginal costing. In addition, the company
needs to get the voice of the customer, and might use
benchmarking.
In comparison to the other authors, for Johansson
a team with central responsibility is important,
although he does not name its tasks in detail.
Johansson sums up some tools to be used for process
evaluation, showing that there is some need for
structured process evaluation.
In literature it is stated, that it is important to
select the right processes for optimization, but that it
is not easy and that there is no structured approach
to do so. Figure 4 shows the evaluation of the
existing concepts from literature.
Figure 4: Evaluation of concepts from literature.
There is no approach fully fulfilling the
requirements: The derivation of processes for
improvement from strategy is not clear. The
transparency on top level in terms of a process map
is only partly described. Concepts for evaluation of
processes are named and some specific examples are
given, but a structured concept is missing. Problems,
process qualification or health assessment might be
interpreted as bottom up input, but again details are
missing. To sum up: There is no structured approach
for the selection of processes in literature. In
addition there are only very few suggestions for the
responsibilities to be installed, driving the process of
prioritization and improvement.
3 QUANTITATIVE PROCESS
MAPS
Based on the requirements of the companies and the
evaluation of existing concepts from literature, the
concept of quantitative process maps is set up. This
subsection describes the four steps of the approach.
Those four steps are the guideline on how to
implement the concept of quantitative process maps
to a company, not to be mixed up with the four steps
from introduction, which explain how the treemap
itself is set up.
(1) Set up a central responsibility for process
improvements and description of its tasks
(2) Definition of the process for strategic input
from top management
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(3) Definition of the process for bottom up input
from employees
(4) Implementation of the quantitative process map
The first step is to set up a central responsibility -
the chief process office (CPO). A chief process
office is a staff unit responsible for the business
process management system. Within the chief
process office the people are responsible to
implement the strategy into processes, to perform
process optimization projects, to evaluate processes
and to take care of the idea management. In addition
the chief process office is offering process
governance in terms of standards for process
management regarding design, measurement and
improvement of processes.
Strategy implementation into processes means to
analyze processes regarding their contribution to
strategy and if necessary improving processes in
order to reach strategic targets.
Process optimization projects are based on
evaluation and strategic as well as bottom up input.
The chief process office offers different optimization
methods regarding intensity of process optimization
and based on maturity level of processes.
Evaluation of processes contains process
monitoring and maturity level assessment.
After the CPO is set up and its tasks are
described, the processes for top down and bottom up
input have to be defined. The combination of top
down and bottom up input as well as CPO tasks are
shown in figure 5.
Figure 5: Process selection.
The chief process office has the task to
implement strategy into processes. Therefor there is
on one hand side some top down input to process
selection from top management to the chief process
office. This input should consider opportunities and
risks as well as general strategic decisions and
information out of benchmarking activities. The
structured approach suggests to define on a yearly
basis the strategic driven change projects as top
down input from top management to the chief
process office.
On the other hand there is information available
from the employees regarding concrete problems in
processes. Those problems or improvement ideas
can be considered for process selection as bottom up
input. The presented approach of this article suggest
to use an idea management driven by the chief
process office to generate and evaluate ideas. It is
also recommended to use a standardized meeting
structure like shopfloor management to identify
problems in daily business.
The chief process office itself generates
knowledge about needed process optimization via
process mapping, process monitoring including KPIs
and the tracking of process maturity levels. Process
maturity levels are only useful in combination with
performance indicators. Otherwise there would be
the risk of over-engineering. Not every process has
to reach highest maturity level. There also might be
processes, which are on highest maturity level but do
not fullfil required performance indicators. In this
case a radical process improvement, for example
using design thinking, is indicated.
The results from top down, bottom up and CPO
process evaluation are used to build up the
quantitative process map. The most important
processes are derived from top management input,
the performance is deduced from bottom up input.
The CPO brings the information together and does
additional evaluations regarding key performance
indicators and process maturity level, taking current
projects and available resource into account. The
CPO sets up the quantitative process map as shown
in figure 6.
The shown process map contains the eleven most
important processes of the company. Within the map
the processes are divided into management, core and
support processes, representing the structure of the
company. The three different sections include end-
to-end processes on the highest level of abstraction.
Those processes where evaluated by importance to
the company and performance. The bigger the boxes
of each process are, the more important the process
is for the company. The color of the boxes implies
the performance of the processes. For example the
core process idea-to-market is the biggest box and is
colored dark. This means it is important but its
performance is low. If a decision for process
improvement has to be taken, processes number 3
and 7 would be the first to be optimized. Based on
the quantitative process map the CPO decides on
processes for optimization.
QuantitativeProcessMaps-AConceptforPrioritizationofBusinessProcessImprovementProjects
445
Figure 6: Quantitative Process Map.
4 CONCLUSIONS
The described concept offers an approach for
companies to prioritize process optimization projects
in order to effectively and efficiently employ chief
process office resources. The approach is
considering top down as well as bottom up input and
defining tasks of chief process offices. The
developed quantitative process map visualizes the
results of process evaluation and supports
management decisions regarding process
optimizations. Further research will be done to
successfully implement the concept in companies.
Future work contains detailing of the different steps.
Especially the evaluations of the processes to build
up the quantitative map have to be concretized. A
validation of the concept is planned for 2014/2015
together with several companies.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The presented work is being investigated within the
publicly funded research project “Cluster of
Excellence - Integrative production technology for
high-wage countries” by the German Research
Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft,
DFG) at RWTH Aachen University.
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