6-2 |
Management and organization responsibilities |
J. L. CAWLEY, Northwest Analytical, Inc., 519 S.W. Park Ave., Portland, OR 97205 Companies that successfully implement process management and maintain continuous process improvement have four factors in common. 1. They believe in the continuous process improvement model. CPI is a fundamental way of doing business not to be confused with “flavor of the month” management movements. 2. They actively promote the concepts and provide training for all staff. 3. Staff interactions are structured to promote process management action, e.g. staff quality circles, authority to control the process, etc. 4. Recognition and compensation are linked to continuous process management. Continuous improvement requires creating corporate procedural, data management and feedback infrastructures. Uniform operational and testing procedures are key to process management. Controlling variation in the operations associated with production is necessary to controlling process variation. Suitable data properly analyzed enables well informed management decisions. To this end, the right data must be collected, stored, analyzed and reported with easy access by all members of the enterprise. Manual paper based systems are not capable meeting current data handling requirements. A competent IT (Information Technology) infrastructure is the necessary enabling technology. The system provides feedback throughout the internal and external supply chain so that the best process management decision is made at each point. The required cultural changes can often be accelerated using consultants to provide expertise and training which is not available within the organization, and to provide a nominally neutral observer and arbiter. The selection criteria and methods on integrating consultants with in-house staff are discussed. Finally, metrics must be established and agreed upon by all members of the operation and management teams. Established metrics are necessary to determine success.
Session 6, The roadmap for process control
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