Page 341 - Design for Six Sigma for Service (Six SIGMA Operational Methods)

Design and Improvement of Service Processes—Process Management 301

Products

Core operation
Product development
and product delivery

Business processes
Business management
Supplier management
Information technology

Figure 10.2 Business Operation Model

Supporting processes
• Accounting and finance process for running financial transactions
• Personnel process for hiring, firing, and promotion of employees
• Purchasing and supplier management process for acquiring supplies
and services needed to run other processes

In fact, processes are everywhere in an organization. Processes found in
organizations are involved in some product or service development, some
production or operations to provide a service, some customer support, some
marketing activities, some sales activities, and so on. Depending on the
nature of the company’s business, certain processes are more important than
others. For service-oriented companies, service delivery processes are
clearly very important. In an industry where frequent new product intro-
ductions are critical for maintaining market share; for example, the movie
industry, the design and development processes may be the most important
processes. The most important consideration in deciding what are important
processes is who the customer is. The most important processes are those
that directly affect the customer value creation.

Optimization of processes, especially the key processes, is extremely
important for the bottom line of service organizations. Process management
is a systematic approach to optimizing processes in terms of the following
process metrics:
• Quality
• Throughput