{"id":8107,"date":"2016-08-03T11:00:48","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T16:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/?p=8107"},"modified":"2024-09-05T17:02:30","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T22:02:30","slug":"understand-business-processes-use-loaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/understand-business-processes-use-loaf\/","title":{"rendered":"To Understand Business Processes, Just\t Use Your Loaf"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BrianWatermark Learning is happy to feature our affiliate Brian Hunt, CBAP,\u00a0<\/em>who illustrates how a bread making machine can be used to understand any business process.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Many recruiters call for specific domain experience when they want help in process redesign. But, whether your product is life insurance, cakes or motorbikes, the principles of business process are the same: you want a defined output from a set of inputs, and you want that output to be provided at consistent time, cost and quality. To do that, you need a designed and managed process.<\/p>\n

A home bread making machine provides a great example of a managed process:<\/p>\n

\"BPM<\/p>\n

The process objective is ‘I want a loaf of bread’ and this will be produced to the users satisfaction if the right ingredients and quantities are put into the mixing pan, if the controls are set correctly and the process constraints are understood. As it takes approximately 2 hours to bake a loaf, expecting this to be done in 20 minutes may result in the dissatisfaction of the uninformed user.<\/p>\n

If you try to make a process do more than it is capable of, it will fail. If you commit to producing what you can’t provide, then short term\u00a0workarounds might work, but the process will not be sustainable and delivery dates, cost and quality will suffer.<\/p>\n

The process requires resources for it to operate. For the bread maker, these resources are a reliable electrical supply and adequate level work-space with sufficient size, position and strength for the bread making machine to sit on. Any process can be understood in a similar way: define the desired output or outputs, the inputs required to achieve these outputs, the transformation or process required to act on these inputs, the process controls and constraints and the resources required for the process to operate. These resources may\u00a0include internal or external data, natural resources, finance,\u00a0suppliers, intellectual property and entrepreneurial skills.\u00a0With business processes, gaining this understanding may mean mapping out the process using marker pens and post-it notes.<\/p>\n


\nFor a deeper dive into this topic, please see our course on Business Process Modeling<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

All outputs require energy for their production. In the breadmaker example, there will be several outputs: the wanted output of the baked loaf and the unwanted outputs of heat and noise. These unwanted outputs are wasted energy and a quantifiable measure of efficiency process efficiency. These are equivalent to waste activities in a business process.<\/p>\n

This is the process used by the bread maker:<\/p>\n

\"BPM<\/p>\n

Modelling the process breaks it down into its fundamental steps as follows:<\/p>\n