What is the meaning of process optimisation?

Deciding, step by step, what a process should still contain, and changing it so that what remains serves the commercial objective. It is a decision about the number and the nature of the steps before it is a decision about tools.

Which is the best example of process optimisation?

Removing a step rather than speeding it up. A reconciliation that exists only because the same fact is held in two systems is optimised by retiring one of the records, not by automating the comparison. The second approach preserves the cost and adds a maintenance budget to it.

What are the seven types of process improvement methodology?

Lean, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, Kaizen, the theory of constraints, total quality management and business process re-engineering are the seven most often listed. The number is a convention rather than a taxonomy. What distinguishes an approach is the evidence it starts from, and whether it is willing to conclude that a step should simply be removed.

Is process optimisation the same as process improvement?

In practice the terms are used interchangeably. The distinction that matters is whether the work assesses every step against a commercial objective, or only tunes the steps that happen to be there.

Does optimisation always mean automation?

No. Two of the four outcomes involve no automation at all. Retire removes the step. Person keeps it with a human, and says why.

How do you avoid optimising the wrong thing?

By mapping the whole before going deep on any part, and by starting from the commercial objective rather than from a process someone has nominated.

What if a step cannot be specified precisely?

Then it is marked person and reported as such. Part of what a Discovery returns is the list of steps that could not be specified.

How long does this take?

The assessment is produced within a Discovery, which typically runs for three to six months, and closer to three where strong operational data already exists.

Guide

Process optimisation

Process optimisation is the work of deciding, step by step, what a process should still contain. Each step is assessed against the commercial objective and marked retire, automate, assist or person. Retire comes first, because a step that is removed does not need to be built. More often than not, the gain is in fewer steps rather than in new software, and in the overlaps between functions rather than inside any one of them.

What does process optimisation actually change?

It changes the number of steps before it changes the tools. Institutions accumulate processes and workflows that no longer resolve to any strategic intent: a reconciliation that guards against a system since replaced, a second log kept because someone who has left did not trust the first, a print step that exists so that a file copy can be made.

Optimisation recovers the intent, then resolves the work to it. New software is sometimes part of the answer. It is rarely the first part.

How is each step assessed?

RetireThe step comes out, and nothing takes its place. Many survive only because of a system since replaced, or a person since departed.
AutomateThe step runs without anyone present.
AssistThe work is prepared in advance, so that a person decides faster and more consistently.
PersonThe step is left to a person, because it cannot yet be specified precisely enough to be anything else.

The four are exhaustive by design. Every step receives one of them, including the steps for which the honest answer is person.

Why is retire assessed before automate?

Automating a step fixes its cost and makes it harder to remove later. Anything automated acquires an owner, a schedule, a failure mode and a maintenance budget, and it will be defended on those grounds long after its purpose has gone.

So the first question asked of any step is whether the process would still be correct without it. If the answer is yes, the step comes out and the path closes over the gap. Only what survives that question is worth the cost of automation.

Where do the largest gains sit?

In the crossovers. The same data, the same controls and the same decision points recur across functions, and one piece of work often resolves several objectives at no additional cost.

These are invisible from inside any single process, which is why the assessment is holistic and hierarchical rather than a pilot. A function-by-function programme will find the local waste and miss the shared cause of it.

How should the result be expressed?

In commercial terms, because that is the form in which it will be argued internally. A finding stated as nine steps reduced to four does not survive a budget meeting. The same finding stated as chargeable capacity released, a bottleneck cleared ahead of a reporting deadline, or a quality constraint lifted from a small number of experienced people, does.

Each finding therefore carries its commercial consequence, its feasibility, the data it would require, the governance it would trigger and the complexity of delivering it.

What does the assessment produce?

A diagnostic and a roadmap, both written to be argued with. The diagnostic states, for every step in scope, what it costs, what it produces, what depends on it, and which of the four assessments it received, with the evidence attached. The roadmap orders the work that follows and names the conditions each item depends on.

Neither is a slide pack. Both are working documents, legible to a finance function and to an engineering function at the same time. What is produced for you is yours: the specification and the reasoning behind it. The firm retains the intellectual property in its own methods and systems.

The diagnostic also contains the part that is easiest to omit and hardest to do without: the list of steps that could not be specified. How much of a process will yield to specification is not known at the outset, which is why the work is conducted as research and reported as such.

Questions

Common questions

What is the meaning of process optimisation?

Deciding, step by step, what a process should still contain, and changing it so that what remains serves the commercial objective. It is a decision about the number and the nature of the steps before it is a decision about tools.
Which is the best example of process optimisation?

Removing a step rather than speeding it up. A reconciliation that exists only because the same fact is held in two systems is optimised by retiring one of the records, not by automating the comparison. The second approach preserves the cost and adds a maintenance budget to it.
What are the seven types of process improvement methodology?

Lean, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, Kaizen, the theory of constraints, total quality management and business process re-engineering are the seven most often listed. The number is a convention rather than a taxonomy. What distinguishes an approach is the evidence it starts from, and whether it is willing to conclude that a step should simply be removed.
Is process optimisation the same as process improvement?

In practice the terms are used interchangeably. The distinction that matters is whether the work assesses every step against a commercial objective, or only tunes the steps that happen to be there.
Does optimisation always mean automation?

No. Two of the four outcomes involve no automation at all. Retire removes the step. Person keeps it with a human, and says why.
How do you avoid optimising the wrong thing?

By mapping the whole before going deep on any part, and by starting from the commercial objective rather than from a process someone has nominated.
What if a step cannot be specified precisely?

Then it is marked person and reported as such. Part of what a Discovery returns is the list of steps that could not be specified.
How long does this take?

The assessment is produced within a Discovery, which typically runs for three to six months, and closer to three where strong operational data already exists.