Global process reengineering - Graphic analysis tools

It's a given that improvement initiatives involve improving processes rather than activities, and that flow management should take precedence over inventory management. This does not exclude the fact that process management is based on rigorously defined minimum operating inventories.

If we needed further convincing, we could draw an analogy with electricity generation processes. We are gradually moving away from management based on "fossil" stocks (of coal, oil, gas, etc.) to management based on energy flows (wind, photons, geothermal energy, running water, tides, waves... not forgetting the "negawatts" of the hunt for wasted natural energy, and why not, neutrinos, plate tectonics and induced volcanoes and tsunamis?) The case of France, with 80% of its nuclear source, can be considered as an intermediate approach insofar as the raw material is recycled (MOX) right through to waste management. Ideally, waste management should be pushed to the point of activity depletion (an obvious systemic principle of AMS) and 6 sigma risk assurance.

The ISO 9000 standards have made a major contribution to promoting process management and customer satisfaction through processes. The sheer volume of procedures describing these processes used to be quite daunting for companies. With each new version, they have been lightened to focus on customer satisfaction, continuous improvement and the collaborative definition of stakeholder needs.

Process description remains an essential element in sound management and in bringing companies "under control". Simple flowcharts can help, but passive description is not enough for a critical analysis of process improvement (reengineering).

The aim of this article is to propose descriptive tools that provide a sufficiently critical view of processes to trigger and facilitate their analysis and the search for improvements.

The constants of these approaches are :

• the ability to analyze from a systemic perspective (comprehensiveness, priorities, non-exhaustiveness, etc.);

• to question interactive relationships before employee competence, favouring global awareness over the questioning of individual trust;

• facilitate group work, for end customers (the customer's result takes precedence over consensus).

First, a few reminders about processes via :

• their relevance to complex enterprise systems;

• their analysis method;

• systemic perspective;

• an example of the paradoxes of offshoring....