How To Identify Problems In Your Processes

Operations will always have problems. But before trying to fix all issues in your processes, it’s important to keep in mind that not all problems are created equal.

People will say something’s a problem today because it’s happening right now and it’s the most urgent thing on your plate. If a problem only happens once, can you even consider it a real problem? Why are we solving something that only happens once? This will make people question the validity of the problem.

We have to be clear on what qualifies as a problem. And the only way we can do that is by understanding what we call a gap scenario. This is the gap between what we call the ideal state and the current state.

Understanding and documenting the current operation

When organizations name problems, they start right away from their own perspective — their own bias. In the work that we do in process improvement, we have to do a step before we even talk about problems and that is to understand the current situation.

We do that through documenting a Goods and Information Flow across the entire customer experience, as it is today, the current operation with no change. This is the first step of all of my activities with clients. It takes a whole day to do but it’s super powerful…