Process Mapping
From GTwM
Business Process Mapping refers to activities involved in capturing exactly what a company does, who is responsible, to what standard a process should be completed and how the success of a business process can be determined. Once this is done, there can be no uncertainty as to the requirements of every internal business process.
ISO 9001 requires a company to follow a process approach when managing its business, and to this end creating business process maps will assist.
Maps come in all shapes and sizes, however it is always useful to concentrate on 1) tracking goals, 2) keeping it simple and 3) allocating responsibility
File:C030217 sales process map2.gif
Early history
The first structured method for documenting process flow, the flow process chart, was introduced by Frank Gilbreth to members of ASME in 1921 as the presentation “Process Charts—First Steps in Finding the One Best Way”. Gilbreth's tools quickly found their way into industrial engineering curricula.
In the early 30's, an industrial engineer, Allan H. Mogensen began training business people in the use of some of the tools of industrial engineering at his Work Simplification Conferences in Lake Placid , New York.
In 1944 a graduate of Mogensen's class, Art Spinanger, took the tools back to Procter and Gamble where he developed their Deliberate Methods Change Program.
Another 1944 graduate, Ben S. Graham, Director of Formcraft Engineering at Standard Register Corporation, adapted the flow process chart to information processing with his development of the multi-flow process chart to displays multiple documents and their relationships.
In 1947, ASME adopted a symbol set derived from Gilbreth's original work as the ASME Standard for Process Charts.
