Manufacturing Processes

Manufacturing Processes and Improvements

What are Business processes

A business process is a combination of procedures, systems, policies, and organizational elements that performs a core function of a business with the object to improve and make it efficient. For thousands of years, organizations have depended on their business processes and their improvement methods for survival and growth. Business processes and methods are responsible for profits and losses. Over the years, there have been many attempts to find methods to improve business processes.

These methods have sometimes been focused on how the work is done, how the work is managed, how the work is automated, and on who performs the work. Some examples of these methods, philosophies and disciplines that relate to the manufacturing industry are included here:

• Industrial Engineering
  
• JIT
  
• Total Quality Management
  
• Reengineering
  
• Lean Manufacturing
  
• Kaizen -Continuous process improvement
  
• Automation
  
• Six Sigma
  
• Etc.
  
  

All of these techniques have had instances of success, which led to their popularity. After which, a method often falls out of favor and popularity due to the fact some fail to show significant positive results in a timely fashion, are too complicated, are not flexible enough, need additional improvement, etc. Some of the techniques and characteristics of these methods are adopted and combined with others to form new processes, making the distinction among them confusing.

Some of the objectives to improve a process are:

• A process must be flexible to accommodate changing conditions
  
• A process must be efficient so that work can be done in a cost-effective manner
  
• A process must be scalable so that it can handle the peaks and throughs of work without falling apart
  
• A process must be effective so tat it can handle any type of work without creating exceptions, workarounds, and new systems that arise to address individual situations.
  
• A process must be situation dependent so that it can be performed in a variety of countries, cultures, political and legal structures, companies, and so on. This objective links to flexibility.
  
• A process must be measurable so that people can determine the status of a business process.
  
  

As it can be seen, there are several aspects that need to be analyzed and understood before choosing a specific process improvement. Senior executives and top managers that understand the dynamic of their businesses as well as their employees and their customers will likely choose methods to enhance their effectiveness and efficiency and solidify their corporate success.