Most businesses, at some time or another, need to stop and examine their processes to identify and eliminate waste and inefficiencies. When this happens, many will turn to Business Process Management (BPM) and Six Sigma’s DMAIC methodology for the numerous benefits and opportunities each offers. At times, though, there can be confusion about how to effectively integrate the two approaches.
DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) is the Six Sigma methodology that has been applied in almost all industries and business environments including offices, service environments and healthcare facilities. The focus of this methodology is to find the weak points in business processes and make them more predictable and stable so as to minimize variation in outputs. Six Sigma’s core mission is process improvement.
BPM has been applied in industries such as healthcare, insurance, finance, utilities and government, all of which rely on human knowledge, information databases, and process flows to produce an end result. Many of these industries are paper-based and rely on forms that must be completed and information that must be gathered to produce the expected output. BPM provides infrastructure support by automating data collection, storage and processing. The core focus for BPM is on process management.
The 5 Phases of Six Sigma and BPM
The DMAIC and BPM frameworks are each comprised of five phases:
DMAIC
Define – During the Define phase, the business process improvement team agrees on what needs to be accomplished and focuses their efforts on a specific problem, what customers might be impacted by it, and how the current process or outcomes are failing to meet their customers’ needs.
Measure – The main goal of the Measure phase is to identify the source of problems by building an understanding of existing process conditions. This understanding helps hone in on potential causes requiring investigation in the Analyze phase. An important part of the Measure phase is to establish a baseline level for performance.
Analyze – Here, theories of root causes are identified, analyzed and verified, and form the basis for solutions in the Improve phase.
Improve – The purpose of the Improve phase is to verify that the proposed solutions solve the problem and eliminate defects, waste, and unnecessary costs that are linked to the customer needs identified during the Define phase. Once the solution has been identified and validated, plans are made for full-scale implementation.
Control – Activities in the Control phase are designed to ensure the problem does not recur over time.
For more details about DMAIC – Six Sigma Fundamentals: What is DMAIC?
BPM
The BPM Life Cycle is similar to the Six Sigma DMAIC model, and includes the following 5 phases:
Design – The design phase takes into account customers, current processes and technological requirements, and designs an improved process that will reduce existing problems and prevent future ones.
Model –The model phase involves performing “what-if” and scenario analyses by examining various combinations of factors to determine how they affect the end result.
Execute – The Execute phase focuses on deployment of a solution into the live production environment.
Monitor – Once processes are executed, they need to be monitored, which involves measuring key process flows and events using various measures such as time, cost and delay.
Optimize – The team will use performance monitoring data to identify additional problems in the process with a focus on continuously improving the process to generate further efficiencies.
Integrating DMAIC and BPM
The following steps may be used to integrate BPM with Six Sigma:
- Six Sigma may be used first to improve processes which can then be automated and managed with BPM.
- Teams should focus on improving cross-departmental collaboration.
- Deploy Six Sigma for measurements, statistical analysis and the disciplined approach to resolving the problems.
- Deploy BPM to measure and monitor the performance of business processes using measures determined by the Six Sigma methodology.
- Apply BPM as the methodology to link improvement and process design efforts directly to the management system and to organizational strategy.
- Use Six Sigma to quantify the critical-to-quality issues within the organization. DMAIC will help organizations apply problem-solving and statistical tools to achieve success.
When Business Process Management and Six Sigma are integrated effectively, they can provide organizations with the basis for improved performance and growth, while supporting a truly customer-focused enterprise.
