Managing Waste and Improving Efficiencies
In the current economic market, organisations are often forced to seek innovative ways to save time, money and reduce waste. This is typically achieved through reviewing waste management and understanding where there may be efficiency gains. Sadly, this activity is not given the attention, time, effort or resources necessary to deliver long-term business benefits. The end result is often poor management decisions, redundancies and “quick & dirty” cost-cutting initiatives leading to low morale across the organisation.
What’s the Solution?
Organisations should invest time in reviewing how they can adapt their SOA/BPM strategies to include Lean Six Sigma techniques.
Lean Six Sigma (LSS) produces real results in difficult economic times by uncovering process waste, reducing non-value adding activity, and increasing productivity. The benefits are even felt in IT. According to the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, “companies can reduce application development and maintenance costs by up to 40%.” That application development productivity can be improved “by up to 50%” by applying LSS techniques, freeing budget for needed investments.
Business process management (BPM) and service-oriented architectures (SOAs) combine with LSS to accelerate improvements and results. At the same time, they increase organizational flexibility and technology enabled responsiveness.Many successful companies have found that the linkages are clear. Early adopters who have worked their way past cultural and organizational barriers are seeing impressive performance and financial results:
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Improved responsiveness to market challenges and changes through aligned and significantly more flexible business and technical architectures
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Improved ability to innovate and achieve strategic differentiation by driving change into the market and tuning processes to meet the specific needs of key market segments
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Reduced process costs through automation and an improved ability to monitor, detect, and respond to problems by using real-time data, automated alerts, and planned escalation
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Significantly lower technical implementation costs through shared process models and higher levels of component reuse
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Lower analysis costs and reduced risk through process simulation capabilities and an improved ability to gain feedback and buy-in prior to coding
The rewards can be great, especially for those who take action now.
Lean Six Sigma (LSS) produces real results in difficult economic times by uncovering process waste, reducing non-value adding activity, and increasing productivity.
Business process management (BPM) and service-oriented architectures (SOAs) combine with LSS to accelerate improvements and results. At the same time, this combination increases organizational flexibility and technology-enabled responsiveness, key to positioning the company for growth as the economy improves.
Process improvement experts are uniquely positioned to play a key role in this transformation as they are able to leverage their business and technical knowledge in combination with the tools and techniques of Lean Six Sigma.
Examples will be provided along with recomendations for getting started.
Recommendations
- Understand the basics of Lean Six Sigma and how BPM and SOA support the Lean Six Sigma methodology
- Understand how to use data to select the right improvement project
- Understand how Business Architects and Business Analysts can play a role in accelerating results
The presentation is available for download here was provided by Hans Skalle an esteemed colleague from IBM’s Global Business Integration Group.
Hans Skalle specializes in Business Process Management (BPM) solutions, business process modeling, and the development of financial models and business cases to support BPM and integration software investments. He has worked directly in the Information Technology industry since 1980 including 8 years as a Business Analyst. He is the lead author of an IBM Redpaper: Aligning Business Process Management, Service-Oriented Architecture, and Lean Six Sigma for Real Business Results.
Hans has more than 20 years of hands-on process improvement consulting experience and is a past Master Evaluator for Minnesota’s Malcolm Baldrige-based Quality Award in the US. He has in-depth knowledge of various performance improvement methodologies including Six Sigma, Lean Sigma, ISO 9000 and other tools and techniques used to drive and sustain continuous improvement and competitive advantage through change and innovation.
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