Designed for the most efficient and effective management of business processes
Managing By Signals®, using the sfn® software, has been designed for the most efficient and effective management of business processes. It enables you to meet two of the greatest demands on your time - making being in control a reality not an illusion and improving results at the same time. It is an essential companion to lean design and other process management techniques.
Conventional wisdom is that in any organisation, what gets measured gets done but we believe that it gets done better if you are measuring the right results and acting on the signals they give you. By applying this approach you will achieve shorter cycle time, lower cost, fewer failures, outcomes to specification and all the benefits go straight to bottom line profitability. You will also get greater control over drivers and risks in your business, increasingly accurate forecasts and seamless KPI "goals to action" management reporting This approach uses statistical process control techniques which we have adapted from those developed in manufacturing when they were faced with similar issues.
You will determine the starting point based on your most urgent need. At the highest level is the construction of a KPI dashboard showing, at a glance, performances in all key areas. At the base is the most tightly defined element or sub-process to be measured, controlled and improved.
Wherever you start sfn® will:
- extract data from source transactional systems,
- compile this into chosen performance measures,
- apply statistical process control analysis to the measures,
- present graphically actual results compared with the calculated norm for each of your processes (as they have been designed and are operated),
- display the key measures in a dashboard of dials.
This relieves you of the burden of collecting, sorting, analysing and interpreting large volumes of data. In addition it draws your attention to where you need to focus your efforts.
The integrated structure enables you to drill down from the top KPI dashboard to the control chart (sChart®), benchmark chart and pareto analysis for the related process. Then continue down through lower and lower levels until you get to the most specific level at which data was collected, be that a sub-process or an individual. One version of the truth which everyone can use to understand the current status and eliminate both poor performance and variability at the same time as significantly improving results.