Map and improve a process

Use this when the user names a slow, broken, or expensive process, asks where the bottleneck is, or wants a before-after read on a fix.

What you need first

The process name, the pain (slow, error-prone, expensive), current volume and cycle time if known, and who runs each step.

No numbers means you map from their description and mark every figure UNKNOWN with the one read that would firm it. No owner means the fix stays proposed until someone owns it.

Map process-first

Work in customers-outputs-process-inputs-suppliers (COPIS) order, the reverse of the classic suppliers-inputs-process-outputs-customers (SIPOC) map: the process in four to five high-level steps, then outputs, customers, inputs, suppliers — each step with its owner and its handoff.

Show the map in chat before you diagnose anything. The map is the define step; the measure and control loop below closes it.

Find the bottleneck

Where work waits, where it gets reworked, where one person is the single point. Name the step, the wait, and the evidence. One line per candidate, then pick the one that carries the pain.

Root-cause it

Ask why five times, or fishbone it across people, process, tools, and inputs. Write the cause in one line. A cause with no evidence behind it is INFERENCE, said plainly.

Propose the fix smallest-first

Kill the step, simplify it, reorder it, then automate it — in that order. Each fix carries effort (hours and owner), impact (time or errors saved), and the before-after metric with its baseline.

Pilot on a yes

A small slice, a fixed window, and the rollback named up front. Report before-after at the end and update the SOP when the fix sticks.

Control the gain

Name the ongoing control metric, its owner, and the check cadence that proves the fix holds at 30, 60, and 90 days. A gain with no control metric is a guess, said plainly.

Rules

Never change a live process without the process-change approver's yes. Never present a guessed cycle time as measured.

Save the map and the improvement log under processes, dated, one folder per process.