First, they looked at their transactional process by keeping a record with the documents to time them in and out as each department/person handled them. This gave them data to know how much actual time was spent on the documents and how much Que time they took where they waited for someone to work on them.
Next, they used an Input/Output diagram to identify all of the inputs and the output for the process. Second, they flow charted their current process as it is. Then they used the outputs of their Input/Output diagram, or now called SIPOC for Supplier Input Output Customer diagrams to make the objects of a Cause and Effect Diagram (Fishbone). They made sure they used a team of individuals to make sure that they captured all of the sources of variation in the documents. After that, they went through each step from their flow chart they created earlier and built an FMEA of all of the possible things that could go wrong, with their severity, rate of occurrence, and non-detectibility. They used their RPN factors from a Pareto Diagram to go after specific improvements. They also redesigned a flow chart process to try and speed up turn around time. In some cases, the flow chart lead to changes in how the form was layed out, so make it flow smoother through the process. Finally, new SOP’s were created and errors were tracked on a control chart to verify improvement. Note: They took samples to measure errors in documents and used routing to check turn-around time in advance. You also need to define what your errors are based on customer expectations.
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