What Is the Meaning of Business Process Flow Management?
Business process flow management is the term given to the planning, implementation and control of processes within a single project. The term "project" encompasses a wide range of possible goals and activities, from reorganizing an accounting department, to building a parking garage, to releasing a new product into the market. Regardless of their purpose, business projects need experienced project managers at the helm to control the flow of individual processes.
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Complex Projects
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Most projects that business owners and managers undertake involve a sequence of individual tasks. Tasks within a project can be related or unrelated -- they can rely on the results of other tasks, or can function independently of other tasks. Projects often involve several sequences of tasks that occur at the same time, sometimes only converging in the final step of a multistep process. Business process flow management is the art and science of making sure that all individual tasks and sequences in a project flow smoothly, efficiently and productively.
Value-Adding Activities
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Project managers should be fully familiar with the concept of value-adding versus non-value-adding activities. A value-adding activity is an individual process within a project that directly adds value to the end result. An example of a value-adding activity is inserting microchips into cellphones on an assembly line. A non-value-adding activity, on the other hand, does not contribute any additional value to the end product. An example of a non-value-adding activity is moving cellphones from one assembly line to another to attach another component.
Process flow management involves identifying and eliminating non-value-adding activities to decrease project time requirements and increase efficiency, resulting in lower costs and higher profit margins.
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Slack Time
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The concept of slack time is also highly relevant in process flow management. Each subsequent process within a larger project must be assigned strict time limits in order for the entire project to be completed on time. As a very basic example, if a project with ten steps must be completed in ten hours, each step must be completed in an average of one hour. Slack time exists when an individual process within a project can take a certain amount longer than its normal time requirement without affecting the project's final completion time.
Process Flow Charts
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Process flow charts help project managers to visualize complex projects, allowing them to easily spot non-value-adding activities and activities with no slack time. Process flow charts generally work from left to right, listing individual processes within distinct shapes that represent different types of processes, and connecting each process with arrows representing their sequence and the flow of materials. Process flow charts can also list the time requirements for each process, which is helpful in determining the project's critical path -- the sequence of activities that have no slack time and absolutely must be completed on time.
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References
- Photo Credit process flow image by Christopher Hall from Fotolia.com
