Received a minor for not having good measureables/goals. Need help with KPIs.

[AMIT BALLAL]

First thing... an medium sized organization may have over 200 processes. And sometimes they can have subprocesses, themselves, depending on the granularity of the mapping. And also sometimes those processes can be grouped into macro processes.

ISO is not very clear on the level of granularity you should map and control your processes. Maybe you should map them "on the basis of what is best for the organization and stakeholders to understand it".

that said, macro processes are difficult to do KPIs because they involve too much things... too many outputs. They are just processes agglomerations. ALMOST (but not exactly) departments.

But 200 processes are just impossible to measure, despite the whole PDCA cycle being almost like a core thing at ISO.

Some stuff are almost impossible to measure without too much bureaucracy and lost time compared to the GAIN of measuring it's output.


KPI's should be required based on the strategic planning of the organization, as well individual processes objectives, some coming from risk analysis, some objectives coming from some CAR or PAR, etc.
Plus some for the processes in the chain that outputs for the client.

But creating KPIs (and then collecting, calculating and analyzing the data) for 200 processes? How many bills has the treasury delayed? How many invoices has the accounting processed on time?

It gets worse when you discover that some of those KPIs are always perfect... so they are even more useless. And time-wasting.

200+ processes? Not possible. You might be including individual activities as a process. I never came across more than 15 processes.
Can you give example of what processes you've included?

 

[rogerpenna]

200+ processes? Not possible. You might be including individual activities as a process. I never came across more than 15 processes.
Can you give example of what processes you've included?

an activity is atomic.

any medium sized company will have at least 5, probably up to 10 departments. Are you telling me whole departments will have at most 2 processes?

that is VERY LOW granularity during process mapping, more likely a macro process.

Just the Quality Department of my company has several processes which it is responsible for (most of them quite cross departamental, of course)

- Risk Management (includes sub processes Risk Discovery, Risk Analysis, Risk Monitoring, Risk Re-Assessment)
- Internal Audit Management (includes sub processes Audit Planning, Auditor Evaluation, Audit Execution, Audit Result Meeting)
- Change Management
- Opportunity for Improvement
-



Activity
Processes can be sub-divided into smaller and smaller units or sub-processes. We define activity as the smallest sub-process that a given business process team decides to illustrate on their process diagrams. (We could reverse that and say that a process is made up of one or more activities.) Activities can consist of a single step, like approving a purchase request or placing a cap on a bottle passing on a production line. Other activities involve multiple steps, like filling out a form, or assembling a chair. There is no consistency about how the various methodologies use terms like task and step, but, increasingly, the term activity is reserved for the smallest unit of analysis. A given activity could be performed by one or more employees, by a software system, or by some combination

Process
A set of activities and transactions that an organization conducts on a regular basis in order to achieve its objectives. It can be simple (i.e. order fulfillment) or complex (i.e. new product development), short-running (i.e. employee on-boarding) or long-running (i.e. regulatory compliance), function-specific (i.e. proposal management) or industry-specific (i.e. energy procurement). It can exist within a single department (i.e. billing), run throughout the entire enterprise (i.e. strategic sourcing), or extend across the whole value chain (i.e. supply chain management).

appian.com/bpmbasics/bpm-glossary/


Look at the example of process in that definition. New Product Development, Employee On-Boarding, Regulatory Compliance, Proposal Management, Energy Procurement, Billion, Strategic Sourcing, Supply Chain Management.


Any department of a medium company will have a dozen processes, some even more.


here, several definitions of process and activities (
businessprocessglossary.com/9121/process
businessprocessglossary.com/7779/sub-processes
businessprocessglossary.com/13598/activity
businessprocessglossary.com/13341/atomic-activity


Let's not overdo it however. (but this also proves that companies have TONS of processes)
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/Mc...DFs/Getting_ruthless_with_your_processes.ashx
at page 2 of the PDF above, it's said a specific oil company had 30 processes for the simple act of folding a seat on an oil rig.

obviously, that is quite ridiculous and bad process mapping.

But even if we reduce those 30 to 1, we still have a process to fold seats on an oil rig.

 

[AMIT BALLAL]

an activity is atomic.

any medium sized company will have at least 5, probably up to 10 departments. Are you telling me whole departments will have at most 2 processes?

that is VERY LOW granularity during process mapping, more likely a macro process.

Just the Quality Department of my company has several processes which it is responsible for (most of them quite cross departamental, of course)

- Risk Management (includes sub processes Risk Discovery, Risk Analysis, Risk Monitoring, Risk Re-Assessment)
- Internal Audit Management (includes sub processes Audit Planning, Auditor Evaluation, Audit Execution, Audit Result Meeting)
- Change Management
- Opportunity for Improvement
-



Activity
Processes can be sub-divided into smaller and smaller units or sub-processes. We define activity as the smallest sub-process that a given business process team decides to illustrate on their process diagrams. (We could reverse that and say that a process is made up of one or more activities.) Activities can consist of a single step, like approving a purchase request or placing a cap on a bottle passing on a production line. Other activities involve multiple steps, like filling out a form, or assembling a chair. There is no consistency about how the various methodologies use terms like task and step, but, increasingly, the term activity is reserved for the smallest unit of analysis. A given activity could be performed by one or more employees, by a software system, or by some combination

Process
A set of activities and transactions that an organization conducts on a regular basis in order to achieve its objectives. It can be simple (i.e. order fulfillment) or complex (i.e. new product development), short-running (i.e. employee on-boarding) or long-running (i.e. regulatory compliance), function-specific (i.e. proposal management) or industry-specific (i.e. energy procurement). It can exist within a single department (i.e. billing), run throughout the entire enterprise (i.e. strategic sourcing), or extend across the whole value chain (i.e. supply chain management).

appian.com/bpmbasics/bpm-glossary/


Look at the example of process in that definition. New Product Development, Employee On-Boarding, Regulatory Compliance, Proposal Management, Energy Procurement, Billion, Strategic Sourcing, Supply Chain Management.


Any department of a medium company will have a dozen processes, some even more.


here, several definitions of process and activities (
businessprocessglossary.com/9121/process
businessprocessglossary.com/7779/sub-processes
businessprocessglossary.com/13598/activity
businessprocessglossary.com/13341/atomic-activity


Let's not overdo it however. (but this also proves that companies have TONS of processes)
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/Mc...DFs/Getting_ruthless_with_your_processes.ashx
at page 2 of the PDF above, it's said a specific oil company had 30 processes for the simple act of folding a seat on an oil rig.

obviously, that is quite ridiculous and bad process mapping.

But even if we reduce those 30 to 1, we still have a process to fold seats on an oil rig.

Of course, you can identify as number of processes as you want. But no need to complicate things.

The term "Department" is not being used anywhere in IATF / any QMS standard. The departmental approach is obsolete and went a long time back. And instead, the process approach is being used, since things don't work in silos as we all are aware. Processes are dependent on another process in order to produce desired result. And interaction is where problems occur most of the time.
That is the reason to identify process (Instead of departments) and determine the interaction between these processes. In order to determine interaction, subprocesses need to be determined eg. "Calibration management" is a subprocess of "Quality control & assurance" process because the higher level of process won't directly interact with other process but its subprocess will.

And measurables / KPIs will be defined on these higher level of processes. Eg. for Quality control & assurance process.
Now it is up to you whether you want to simplify or complicate things. Both ways system will conform to the requirements of IATF16949 / ISO9001 standard. Keep in mind, we are not developing a system just to comply with the requirements of a particular standard, but so that it can benefit the organization and help achieve a particular objective.

If you make a system that is difficult to understand and follow, it will not be followed and ultimately it will fail.

 

[qualprod]

Putting objectives to all these things is NOT what the standard requires. Frankly, putting objectives to things like management review, document control and other is a waste of time. I'd go back and look at the business and what those objectives are. Wasting time on measurable for records, documents, internal audits etc is not going to garner support from management.

Andyn
I think What they relate to, is to use such kpi for the monitoring of the objective goal. These kpis help to evaluate how the objective is running.
But shuch tasks are not the objective.
Hope is explained well.

 

[rogerpenna]

Of course, you can identify as number of processes as you want. But no need to complicate things.

The term "Department" is not being used anywhere in IATF / any QMS standard. The departmental approach is obsolete and went a long time back. And instead, the process approach is being used, since things don't work in silos as we all are aware. Processes are dependent on another process in order to produce desired result. And interaction is where problems occur most of the time.
That is the reason to identify process (Instead of departments) and determine the interaction between these processes. In order to determine interaction, subprocesses need to be determined eg. "Calibration management" is a subprocess of "Quality control & assurance" process because the higher level of process won't directly interact with other process but its subprocess will.

And measurables / KPIs will be defined on these higher level of processes. Eg. for Quality control & assurance process.
Now it is up to you whether you want to simplify or complicate things. Both ways system will conform to the requirements of IATF16949 / ISO9001 standard. Keep in mind, we are not developing a system just to comply with the requirements of a particular standard, but so that it can benefit the organization and help achieve a particular objective.

If you make a system that is difficult to understand and follow, it will not be followed and ultimately it will fail.

From a BPM perspective, it is not.
The number of processes is at it is. Calling it a subprocess or a process won´t change the complexity of the system, the only thing you are doing is making it easier to escape the auditor asking for KPIs for every process.

a quote from "Fundamentals of BPM"
"The question is whether an overly coarse-grained view on processes, without any further subdivision, is useful for an organization that strives to become processcentered. Remember that the idea of process management is to actively manage business processes in the pursuit of satisfying its specific customers. If one selects business processes to be such large entities, then the result may be that these cannot be easily managed separately, both in terms of scope and speed of action. Consider, for example, how difficult it would be to model or redesign a process when it covers half of all the operations within an organization. A realistic model of such a business process would take a very long time to develop and could become extremely complex. Also, redesigning such a large process would be a time-consuming affair, let alone the implementation of such a redesign. Depending on the situation, an organization may not have that time "


Even outside of BPM, a Process definition is usually that a Process transforms an input into an output.

when you have such coarse granularity, you will have MULTIPLE inputs and outputs., thus not really a process.



I agree with you that showing a high granularity from the start is complicated. Too much info.

Which is why BPM is not about modelling everything at once. It's a whole method of prioritizing, modelling the AS-IS, analyzing, simulating, testing TO-BE to created improvements on processes... and again... PRIORITIZATION of processes. According to the Value Chain. According to ROI.

Which is the whole point of this thread... having KPIs for every process? That's nonsense. There is no need to it. The cost of having KPIs to every process is too high, too little return.

Either ISO is wrong about requiring all processes to be measured, or ISO is wrong about the nature of processes (if it really considers such macro processes as "processes") or we are wrong about what ISO asks.

One should create KPIs to be able reach objectives, from Quality or from Strategic Planning...


or for specific processes that were targeted as important for the value chain and that need to be improved.

 

[AMIT BALLAL]

From a BPM perspective, it is not.
The number of processes is at it is. Calling it a subprocess or a process won´t change the complexity of the system, the only thing you are doing is making it easier to escape the auditor asking for KPIs for every process.

a quote from "Fundamentals of BPM"
"The question is whether an overly coarse-grained view on processes, without any further subdivision, is useful for an organization that strives to become processcentered. Remember that the idea of process management is to actively manage business processes in the pursuit of satisfying its specific customers. If one selects business processes to be such large entities, then the result may be that these cannot be easily managed separately, both in terms of scope and speed of action. Consider, for example, how difficult it would be to model or redesign a process when it covers half of all the operations within an organization. A realistic model of such a business process would take a very long time to develop and could become extremely complex. Also, redesigning such a large process would be a time-consuming affair, let alone the implementation of such a redesign. Depending on the situation, an organization may not have that time "


Even outside of BPM, a Process definition is usually that a Process transforms an input into an output.

when you have such coarse granularity, you will have MULTIPLE inputs and outputs., thus not really a process.



I agree with you that showing a high granularity from the start is complicated. Too much info.

Which is why BPM is not about modelling everything at once. It's a whole method of prioritizing, modelling the AS-IS, analyzing, simulating, testing TO-BE to created improvements on processes... and again... PRIORITIZATION of processes. According to the Value Chain. According to ROI.

Which is the whole point of this thread... having KPIs for every process? That's nonsense. There is no need to it. The cost of having KPIs to every process is too high, too little return.

Either ISO is wrong about requiring all processes to be measured, or ISO is wrong about the nature of processes (if it really considers such macro processes as "processes") or we are wrong about what ISO asks.

One should create KPIs to be able reach objectives, from Quality or from Strategic Planning...


or for specific processes that were targeted as important for the value chain and that need to be improved.

No one here is trying to escape from having KPIs for every process whether for high-level processes or subprocesses. And IATF16949 doesn't require to have KPIs for every process. It depends on the organization and its context to determine whether a KPI is required. And IATF16949 doesn't even use the word "KPI", instead, it uses "Effectiveness and efficiency measures".
The objective of IATF16949 and BPM are different. Although BPM tools can be integrated into IATF16949 based QMS, let's not forget we are discussing IATF16949 here.
I would like to ask whether your organization is IATF16949 certified? And have you specified 200 processes in your list of processes and do you internally audit 200 processes? Of course, your process map can include 200+ processes, but I am not asking about the process map.

 

[rogerpenna]

No one here is trying to escape from having KPIs for every process whether for high-level processes or subprocesses. And IATF16949 doesn't require to have KPIs for every process. It depends on the organization and its context to determine whether a KPI is required. And IATF16949 doesn't even use the word "KPI", instead, it uses "Effectiveness and efficiency measures".
The objective of IATF16949 and BPM are different. Although BPM tools can be integrated into IATF16949 based QMS, let's not forget we are discussing IATF16949 here.
I would like to ask whether your organization is IATF16949 certified? And have you specified 200 processes in your list of processes and do you internally audit 200 processes? Of course, your process map can include 200+ processes, but I am not asking about the process map.

well, the thread started along those lines, on discussion about if all processes needed kpis, etc.

no, we do not audit 200 processes.

we do not have that much, but we certainly have more than 15 (which you talked as the biggest number you ever saw in any company).

we do not audit all of our processes. Of course not. It would make no sense. Just as we do not create KPIs for every process.

 

[AMIT BALLAL]

well, the thread started along those lines, on discussion about if all processes needed kpis, etc.

no, we do not audit 200 processes.

we do not have that much, but we certainly have more than 15 (which you talked as the biggest number you ever saw in any company).

we do not audit all of our processes. Of course not. It would make no sense. Just as we do not create KPIs for every process.

Of course, your organization can have number of processes based on its size, complexity, operations, etc. factors.

 

[Sebastian]

CQI-16 says generally up to 10 Customer Oriented Processes might be observed in every company.
In my opinion we need to add 6 more and that's all.
I don't see any reason to go beyond that number.
If someone struggles with identification of KPI for process, there are two options.
One - look for another job.
Two - it is not worth of managing it as high level process.

 

[patricks]

"Top Management shall ensure that quality objectives to meet customer requirements are defined, established and maintained for relevant functions, processes and levels throughout the Organization. "

So I recieved a minor on this clause. I need to get some measureables & goals together for out processes. So far, I have:

Training - Goal of 2 employees crosstrained in other areas outside of their day to day duties per year.

Manufacturing - Goal of Cost of poor quality not to exceed $3,000 per year.

Quality Planning/Safety - Goal of 0 safety incidents per year.

Quoting - Goal of 0 RFQ's not being processed within 3 days of recieving them.

Process Design - Goal of $3,000 in savings from process design improvements per year.

Shipping - Goal of 100% on time delivery (not sure if this is even atainiable)

Outsource Process - Goal of 0 supplier defects per year.

Now, Im stuck on the following:

Corrective & Preventitive action
Doc & Record control
Internal Auditing
Management review
Receiving
Purchasing
Maintenance
Calibration

Any ideas of what I could track for those? We are a small (less than 50 employees) prototype shop that does 3 & 5 axis laser, machining, and welding.

Corrective & Preventative action KPIs: Time to closure (Ideally < 14 days), Number of (trending down), Recurrence (%)
Internal Auditing: Percentage completion, Frequency, Time to closure (days) for mitigations
Management review: Frequency, Objectives (i.e. what is discussed in management review? Answer: All these KPIs)
Maintenance KPIs: Uptime (% or hours), Unscheduled maintenance (hours), Percentage completion of scheduled maintenance, Critical parts inventory
Calibration KPIs: Some sort of calibration tracking method i.e. spreadsheet or a software. Evidence of MSA during PPAP and periodically.