How to reformulate the processes in your company?

Speaking of "reformulating the processes in your company to improve productivity" usually refers to the image of executives designing large and ambitious new policies. A set of revolutionary formulas come to mind that will later be applied throughout the organization chart, from top to bottom, without losing sight of medium and long-term objectives. But is it so?

The reality, however, is far from all that. True transformations and reformulations of the processes often come from the sum of actions. Keep in mind that process improvement is an important aspect that must be worked on in all companies. This is because these are the link that will allow you to reach the goals you have as a company. Therefore, they must be optimized.

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Part of this idea results in a trend that is gaining ground among leading companies: Lean management. A methodology that aims to eliminate "waste" in a company's processes to gain productivity. Change the method of the way things are done, through a reformulation of the processes that grant autonomy to each work team to implement constant improvements in its operation.

You can talk to your Supply Chain Management so they can help you improve management processes and establish them within your company. This will also require you to follow some steps such as the following:

• Define the processes that make up the organization and the most important key indicators of each phase of the process. It is necessary and important that you know the indicators and measure them to know where you should make some improvements. For example: it would be optimal to digitize the administrative tasks of the company. The key indicators would be the reduction of time in manual tasks, cost savings, among others.
  
  
• Define the phase or phases of the process in which it will be sought to improve the indicator that has been chosen at the beginning. It is better to modify the phases one by one since this way the results achieved will be known exactly. If too many things are changed at once, you will not know which change has had a positive influence and which has not. 
  
  
• Once the stage or stages to be improved have been chosen, the process change project is planned. First, the process must be redesigned and the objectives to be achieved must be clear. Once the new design has been established, the technological resources must be chosen to carry out the changes in the processes, measure their results, etc. Next, the time of the process must be defined and, what is more important, respect it when starting it up. Finally, the entire team must be involved; it is essential to do this from the beginning of the improvement process.
  
  
• Set the right goals. It is important to set the objectives that you want to reach as well as identify the opportunities for improvement and what resources are needed to achieve these objectives. To achieve the appropriate objectives, it will be essential that you and the rest of the management team meet and debate about it; in this way, you will be able to reach a consensus that will help a lot when implementing the changes in the different processes and/or stages that need to be reformulated. When everyone agrees, everyone will work to meet the objectives.
  
  
• Analyze the results obtained. It is important to have tools to analyze the results obtained with the improvement of the process. In this step, the initial indicator must be analyzed and see if the objectives have been achieved. Both quantitative and qualitative results must be analyzed and see if the objectives defined at the beginning have been achieved and if it has been possible to implement the changes to improve the process. The results must be communicated both to the team involved and to the entire company.
  
  
• Control and constantly monitor the process, using the metrics. The objectives that were given in an improvement process can change over time. That is why the processes must be constantly reviewed to identify if they have changed. In addition, the processes must be reviewed to know if the improvements that you wanted to achieve have been achieved or not.

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Do you need to make changes in your processes?