Business Process Improvement: Improving Flow and Reducing Waste to Increase Customer Value

Workshop Length:  2 days

Target Audience

• Continuous improvement or operational excellence practitioners
• Lean “thinkers” and practitioners
• Six sigma black belts
• Value stream leaders
•  Leaders of improvement initiatives or projects
• Business process owners
• Business leaders and change agents seeking improved business results

Why this Workshop?

The Business Process Improvement (BPI) workshop is based on the premise that it is an organization’s business processes that create and deliver value.  Workshop participants will discover and learn a set of principles and guidelines to increase that value and provide it more quickly to customers.

The skills participants learn during the workshop will accelerate their professional development, and help reduce the time it takes to achieve meaningful results upon returning to the workplace.

This workshop distills powerful ideas and proven techniques into actionable information and useful skills. It uses a variety of hands on activities including a simulation to strengthen those skills. Everything is backed up with real-world examples, and clear, repeatable principles and guidelines.

Practitioners will benefit from the practical methods this workshop provides

Unique Learning Approach

One of the features of this workshop that makes it truly unique is that the workshop facilitator is also a bestselling author.  The workshop blends lessons learned with thought leadership and includes selected content from the upcoming 2^nd edition.  Add the facilitator’s 25 + yrs of consulting and coaching experience improving knowledge work, and you create an opportunity for rich discussion.  Participants will learn not only the “what and how,” but the why, which is often a more important consideration.

A second key workshop feature is the integration of proven lean thinking concepts and principles, illustrated in the context of knowledge work and business processes.   So, the language and examples will be both familiar, and more relevant to those who work “outside” of manufacturing

This Workshop Will Teach You

• How to identify a “true” business process, and specify its boundaries
• and goals
• How to model process workflow using Swimlane Diagrams
• How to conduct a structured assessment of a business process
• What “flow” is and why it is such a powerful concept
• A set of typical “barriers to flow,” along with selected approaches to address those barriers
• How to apply a set of proven principles and guidelines to improve flow
• A set of measures related to flow- and the insight each offers on key customer and business results

Throughout the workshop, the focus is on improving flow and reducing or eliminating waste in a business process.  You’ll have the opportunity to learn first hand how key concepts, principles, models, and the structured assessment approach were applied in the context of a recent award winning “lean” engagement. 

You’ll be able to view and ask questions about many of the actual work products produced during the engagement-especially from the structured assessment. You’ll also be able to benefit from discussing lessons learned from applying lean thinking to a business process, which includes 7 principles for improving the flow of knowledge work.

You'll gain skills and confidence by applying these principles to a business process during the workshop via a simulation.  Finally, not only will you directly experience the benefits of improved flow, you will also be able to use selected measures of flow to calculate the impact that improved flow has on customer and business results.

Instructor – Robert Damelio:

Robert is a consultant, author, and President of THE BOTTOM LINE GROUP, a Dallas, Texas based management-consulting firm.  Robert has spent 25 plus years helping both Fortune 500 and Government organizations strengthen operations, increase productivity, and provide customer-perceived value.  Throughout his career, he has focused exclusively on understanding and improving knowledge-intensive work in service, professional, administrative, and “non-manufacturing” processes.  He’s designed and facilitated hundreds of hours of classroom learning and also provides coaching and guidance in process improvement, process management, and change management to individuals at all organization levels. During the last 10 years especially, Robert has been helping leaders within Client organizations plan, implement, and measure the results of their major organization change and improvement initiatives. 

Many of you may know Robert from his current ASQ Lean Enterprise Division leadership role, as Chair of the Lean body of knowledge and certification committee, or as the author of The Basics of Process Mapping.  You can read Robert’s blog here.

Register at the SHINGO PRIZE site here:

http://www.shingoprize.org/htm/conferences/mini-conferences/dallas-2010