When I talk to clients about business processes and the importance of process knowledge, they often confuse 'process' with 'procedure'. The mistake is understandable. Both are "intentional methods" of doing business, and procedures are a far more common and familiar territory than process.

The reason that procedures are more common is most likely cost and skill. Procedure-building is similar to "OJT" (On The Job Training). A worker is designated "best". An observer then documents behavior, and a technical writer prepares a procedure document that instructs others how to copy the example.

On the other hand, process-building is an engineering activity. It begins by considering the objective, and then the means to achieve it. Using scientific principles, available and potential tools, and considering alternatives, costs and quality, a correct method that reflects cause-effect is outlined, tested and implemented.

It is possible and likely that no worker presently meets this standard of performance before a correct process is created. This is why approaches that start by analyzing and diagramming activities ("what we do now") are far inferior to a true process approach that begins by asking, "What result do we want, and what activities does this depend upon"

Procedure-building attempts at best to preserve the status-quo; to slow the deterioration of time by copying "something that works". Process-building attempts to achieve the goal, and often gives organizations the means to exceed their past accomplishments.

Procedures

Procedures are activity oriented. Step-by-Step, they tell people what to do with little attention to why. In effect, procedures say, "Trust Me", and the good operator obeys.

In Manufacturing, it is common to use procedure sheets, or manufacturing "recipes". Years ago, I helped a client who operated an aluminum molded part operation. The business had thousands of "recipes" specifying: mold #, fill pressures and fill times, and holding times for cooling.

Step-By-Step, the operators faithfully followed these recipes, and year-by-year the parts yield grew worse.

The problem is, a procedure or recipe may be correct under a given set of circumstances, but things change. For example, the heat and mechanical characteristics of that aluminum molded part facility changed over time. With age, maintenance, and repair - it was literally no longer the same machine.

Every year, an increasing number of the recipes were wrong, and the obedient operator had little choice but to run the procedures, and discover by trial and error which procedures were still valid.

A Process approach made it possible to involve the operator's judgment. (The good operator is one that thinks.) By developing an operation method and process knowledge based on cause-effect relationships, we made it possible for operators to spot errors in recipes before the aluminum shot was fired!

Properly used, procedures are subordinate to and interpreted in the context of process knowledge.

The Business Process

Business Process knowledge is something over and above the physical capital of the facility and equipment. Strategic engineering will assess technologies, weigh risks, and oversee the initial allocation of capital to facilities, equipment and tools. If this is done well, we say that the process is "strategically correct" At this point, however, the newly staffed facility is just "guys with machines". It is now up to the tactical engineering and operations management to deploy (and if necessary, re-deploy) these available resources for optimal results.

Within a work-center, a business process is an intentional, designed baseline plan for roles, stations, tasks and targets. It is the organized knowledge of who does what, where, when. Some industries recognize that this is not the job of the day-to-day process manager to create tactical processes from scratch. In retail sales, specialty teams move through each location to "set" the store, In restaurant franchises, franchise "schools" and start-up crews help establish the business processes and pass along the process knowledge to management. Process managers should be responsible for the correct and consistent operation of the business process, and should contribute to systematic improvement - but they are not responsible for its invention, or re-invention!

Need An Example?

A simple example is often helpful in separating and clarifying two similar ideas, and the perfect case came to my mind as I deciphered the workings of our new digital camera.

The Procedure approach was useful for a quick start: 1) Turn The Power on. 2) Set Program Dial to "P" 3) Look At your subject thru the viewfinder. 4) Press the Silver button.

This procedure helped me to take my first picture, but does not make me a photographer. For over one hundred years the science of photography is based on concepts of light, lens, focal point and image plane.

The process of photography begins with an understanding of the objective: a captured image where we control the illumination, color and contrast, depth of field, and motion. The key process metrics have always been: light sensitivity, grain (now, "mega-pixels"), aperture, exposure time, and filtration.

From the Brownie box camera to the latest multi-mega-pixel digital, the science and basic process of photography has been remarkably stable, even though the procedures vary with camera model and circumstance.

Process Knowledge is so obviously the distinguishing characteristic of the professional photographer with a competitive advantage. Anyone else is a "guy with a camera".

Conclusion

In a modern business, it is unacceptable to have gauges, controls, computer reports metrics, and machine adjustments which are mysterious unknowns to an operations work force that just "follows recipes". The result is a slow creeping loss of competitiveness that many may not grasp until it is too late.

This condition is avoided by retaining, organizing and communicating process knowledge. Learn the tactical management skill of mastering the tools you have. If you can't run the existing facility correctly and consistently, capital expenditures on new "toys" is likely to let you make more expensive scrap faster!