One of the most undervalued tools I learned, grasped, and forgot about for lack of use, is the SIPOC. Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of use out of it.
Our teams were faced with the daunting task of defining about 40 new organization-wide business policies. These processes were paramount in getting sponsoring for a major initiative
How do you do this? Well, that’s simple. Doing it isn’t, unless you properly plan. Your efforts don’t stop at planning, but convincing key people – higher up on the ladder most often than not – that your plan is the best.
A fool-proof way of doing this is demonstrating – preferably on one PowerPoint slide – how you’ll map these processes properly the first time and get everybody’s buy-in.
Out comes the SIPOC, a catchy sixties Star Trek-sounding acronym for a Vulcan illness. Not quite so. It is a smart acronym for Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer.
The SIPOC Identifies
- Major tasks and activities
- The boundaries of the process
- The process outputs
- Who receives the outputs (the customers)
- What the customer requires of the outputs
- The process inputs
- Who supplies the inputs (suppliers)
- What the process requires of the inputs
- The best metrics to measure
Supplier – Know and work with your supplier. Help your supplier improve.
Input – Strive to continually improve the inputs. Make it easier to get it right the first time.
Process – Describe the process at a high level, but detailed enough so that an executive or a lay person would understand. Mistake-proof the process. Know it inside out. Know what works. Eliminate what doesn’t
Output – Strive to continually improve the outputs. Be the best with metrcis!
Customer – Keep the customer’s requirements in sight. Stay on target. Remember the Critical to Satisfactions (CTS’).
sipoc
The great thing about the SIPOC is that it’s an excellent team building tool and I put emphasis on inter-departmental cooperation here. Mapping processes at a high level is more than just writing ISO instructions or making flashy “Visios”. I love the sound of crickets in front of eight noisy people in a closed room brought on by their awestrickeness when they see how long it takes to map a SIPOC – and that’s me doing it for them on the white board not really understanding in great detail what their individual tasks are.
SIPOC Explained
SIPOC Steps
- We need to get a 50,000 ft. view of the process first
- Identify the process in simple terms
- Identify External Inputs (raw materials, employees, etc.)
- Identify the Customer Requirements (Outputs) (required temperatures, lot numbers, etc.)
- Make sure to include all value-added and non value-added steps
- Include both process and product output variables
SIPOC Example
SIPOC Airline Example
Next Steps
Once you have an agreed upon and more importantly, understood, SIPOC – understanding the SIPOC implies that you can easily identify opportunities for improvement – you can proceed to the next step in process mapping.
Value Stream Mapping? Spaghetti Diagrams? Flow-Charting? Swimming Lanes Diagram? It all depends on many things. Stay posted.
Metrics
I want to conclude by suggesting that all processes you map, should be able to indicate which key metrics to measure and report. Here are some pointers for the not so obvious.
- Measure things that matter – to our customer (Critical to Satisfaction)
- Measure consistency reduce and understand variation (Critical to Quality)
- Monitor and evaluate performance (Critical to Delivery)
- Measure conformance to the process
- Identify improvement opportunities
- Make your metrics practical and graphical
- The right metrics drive the right behaviors
