You wouldn't consider hiring a group of production workers and telling
them to go out and produce, without telling them specifically what you
want them to do. Why is it, then, that we don't think we need to manage
our business processes in the same controlled manner? In many organizations
today, there. are many individual groups all doing a. good job.
They are doing their own thing, very interested in meeting or beating
their measurements, but not understanding or caring about how their
activities affect others further down the process. They are interested
only in what they are doing and how they are measured. This situation
causes sub optimization to occur throughout the workplace. The three
major objectives of BPI, then, are:
• Making processes effective-producing the desired results.
• Making processes efficient-minimizing the resources used.
• Making processes adaptable-being able to adapt to changing customer
and business needs.
All well-defined and well-managed processes have some common
characteristics:
• They have someone who is held accountable for how well the process
performs (the process owner).
• They have well-defined boundaries (the process scope).
• They have well-defined internal interfaces and responsibilities.
• They have documented procedures, work tasks, and training requirements.
• They have measurement and feedback controls close to the point at
which the activity is being performed.
• They have customer-related measurements and targets.
• They have known cycle times.
• They have formalized change procedures.
• They know how good they can be.




Business Process Improvement book