S
systems_thinker
Systems Approach or Process Approach?
I think ISO 9000 has perhaps sounded its own death knell with the so-called "process approach." The chief difficulty I see with the process approach, as currently configured, is that it asks us to dive down to the micro level of managing and improving critical-to-quality processes, without asking us to first understand at the macro level how the overall system in which the processes reside works.
Why should we emphasize systems over processes? Simply because organizations evolve as systems, not processes. The success or failure of an organization is dependent upon how well the component processes making up its business system interact with each other. Unfortunately, most continual improvement philosophies, including ISO 9000, focus on improving processes. They hew to the assumption that if the processes making up the system are improved to their maximum, the system itself will exhibit maximum improvement. This assumption is wrong.
A systems approach to improvement holds that an organization should be treated like a system, where the interdependency, or linkage, between the processes making up the system is recognized. A key concept of systems thinking is that by improving individual processes and achieving local optima you do not necessarily improve the system. Because of interdependence and variation, the optimum performance of a system as a whole is not the same as the sum of all the local optima. In fact, if all the component processes of a system are performing at their maximum level, the system as a whole will not be performing at its best.
It is true that ISO 9001:2000 asks us to consider the “sequence and interaction” of processes when undertaking the process approach to quality management. Other than that, however, the standard has little to say about managing and improving processes collectively as a system. The inherent danger with the process approach is that some companies may try to apply it without building up the necessary understanding of how their overall production system works, resulting in sub-optimization of the total system.
Too often, with process improvement efforts, discrete processes are flowcharted in a flurry of activity, and improvement teams hurriedly convened to improve what “everybody knows” needs improving. However, how many of these improvement efforts are likely to be focused where they are really needed to help the system meet its goal? Too often, the effort is wasted and dissipated on improving processes to achieve local optima which have little or no influence on the behavior of the overall system.
Sorry if I offend anyone on this forum and forgive the overly-long post, but I just don't see the value in the ISO 9000 approach. I think it is fundamentally wrong and encourages organizations to adopt a specialist intervention approach to improvement and treat quality in isolation from the total business system. Look at Toyota as a good example of how it could be done: at Toyota, the driving force for quality is not standardization, but rather the philosophy of operating with little or no inventory achieved through Just-In-Time (JIT)/Pull production which is an inherent part of the “lean” Toyota Production System (TPS). There is no Quality Management System at Toyota, only the TPS, where high quality is a necessary attribute of the system since, in a JIT environment, passing on a defect to the next process would halt production. Toyota manages its system and high quality is one of the results.
I think ISO 9000 has perhaps sounded its own death knell with the so-called "process approach." The chief difficulty I see with the process approach, as currently configured, is that it asks us to dive down to the micro level of managing and improving critical-to-quality processes, without asking us to first understand at the macro level how the overall system in which the processes reside works.
Why should we emphasize systems over processes? Simply because organizations evolve as systems, not processes. The success or failure of an organization is dependent upon how well the component processes making up its business system interact with each other. Unfortunately, most continual improvement philosophies, including ISO 9000, focus on improving processes. They hew to the assumption that if the processes making up the system are improved to their maximum, the system itself will exhibit maximum improvement. This assumption is wrong.
A systems approach to improvement holds that an organization should be treated like a system, where the interdependency, or linkage, between the processes making up the system is recognized. A key concept of systems thinking is that by improving individual processes and achieving local optima you do not necessarily improve the system. Because of interdependence and variation, the optimum performance of a system as a whole is not the same as the sum of all the local optima. In fact, if all the component processes of a system are performing at their maximum level, the system as a whole will not be performing at its best.
It is true that ISO 9001:2000 asks us to consider the “sequence and interaction” of processes when undertaking the process approach to quality management. Other than that, however, the standard has little to say about managing and improving processes collectively as a system. The inherent danger with the process approach is that some companies may try to apply it without building up the necessary understanding of how their overall production system works, resulting in sub-optimization of the total system.
Too often, with process improvement efforts, discrete processes are flowcharted in a flurry of activity, and improvement teams hurriedly convened to improve what “everybody knows” needs improving. However, how many of these improvement efforts are likely to be focused where they are really needed to help the system meet its goal? Too often, the effort is wasted and dissipated on improving processes to achieve local optima which have little or no influence on the behavior of the overall system.
Sorry if I offend anyone on this forum and forgive the overly-long post, but I just don't see the value in the ISO 9000 approach. I think it is fundamentally wrong and encourages organizations to adopt a specialist intervention approach to improvement and treat quality in isolation from the total business system. Look at Toyota as a good example of how it could be done: at Toyota, the driving force for quality is not standardization, but rather the philosophy of operating with little or no inventory achieved through Just-In-Time (JIT)/Pull production which is an inherent part of the “lean” Toyota Production System (TPS). There is no Quality Management System at Toyota, only the TPS, where high quality is a necessary attribute of the system since, in a JIT environment, passing on a defect to the next process would halt production. Toyota manages its system and high quality is one of the results.
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