Business Process Improvement Concepts

Flashcards covering key terms and concepts related to business process improvement, waste analysis, root-cause analysis, and performance measurement.

Value-adding (VA)

Produces value or satisfaction.

Business value-adding (BVA)

Necessary or useful for the business to operate.

Non-value-adding (NVA)

Everything that is not value-adding or business value-adding.

Seven Sources of Waste: Transportation

Unnecessary movement of materials.

Seven Sources of Waste: Motion

Unnecessary movement of people or equipment.

Seven Sources of Waste: Inventory

Excess of inventory is having more materials or information than needed.

Seven Sources of Waste: Waiting

Waiting for things to happen.

Root-Cause Analysis

A family of techniques used to identify and understand key problems or events.

Why-why Diagram

A tree diagram that analyzes negative effects in business processes.

Cause-effect Diagram (Fishbone)

A diagram that categorizes causes of a problem into major categories.

Cycle time

The average time it takes to handle one case from start to end.

Flow Analysis

Estimates overall process performance using known performance data.

Cycle time efficiency

Processing time divided by cycle time.

Queue Analysis

Analyzes what happens when work arrives and needs to wait for service/resources.

λ (lambda)

Arrival rate, indicating how many cases/jobs/customers arrive per time unit.

μ (mu)

Service rate, indicating how many one server can handle per time unit.

ρ (rho)

Occupation/utilization rate.

Qualitative impact

Non-number impact such as stress, frustration, or poor reputation.

Quantitative impact

Number-based impact such as dollars lost or time-wasted.

Heuristic

A rule of thumb for improving processes, balancing trade-offs.