On June 19th, close to 100 employees attended a Continuous Improvement (CI) workshop entitled Process Mapping: The Journey to Efficiency. The workshop was led by Human Resources with presenters Michele Ryan, Business Process Analyst, Housing and Residences and Courtney Bremer, eResources Access Manager, Library.
“A process map is a visual depiction of the step-by-step progression through a procedure. Process mapping makes our work visible so we can share it with other people,” explained Michele Ryan. She went on to speak about how Housing and Residence is deepening their knowledge to get onto a good path for continuous improvement.
The Housing Department has many processes to keep track of, including the management of applications for residence, room changes, withdrawal from residence and others. They are currently documenting their main system, HoME, in order to visualize its functionality. In this case, process mapping is being used as a jumping off point for improvement initiatives and also allows for business continuity in the event of something unexpected.
“Through our Excellence Canada certification journey, the Library identified the need for process improvement around access to our eResources,” said Courtney Bremer during her presentation. She took workshop attendees through the steps of mapping out a process, which included identifying an ideal state, and noting where the gaps to reaching that state may be. She demonstrated a process map that was created in the Library using stakeholder collaboration and sticky notes to identify each step in the process of granting users access to eResources. The current state was confusing and unstructured and didn’t deliver a good customer experience, while the future state, which has now been implemented, streamlined the approach into a series of comprehensive steps.
There are many ways to do process mapping, including user story mapping with post it notes, process walk-throughs and task observation. If you have questions about any of these methods or would like to learn more, contact Michele or Courtney.
The next Continuous Improvement Workshop is planned for the end of July. Visit the Lean at Waterloo events page for upcoming information. If you would like to join the CI mailing list to learn about upcoming events, contact Raghda Sabry, HR Project Coordinator.