How to Prioritize Process Improvement Initiatives
When it comes to process improvement, one of the top questions I get asked is how to prioritize the process improvement initiatives that ultimately get identified within an organization. While there are no right or wrong answers, I’ve found a few different ways that are extremely effective.
Through the years, I’ve also learned that it’s important to have a few methodologies when it comes to prioritization because you want to make sure you don’t lose visibility of the proposed initiatives and that your actions closely align with the organizational goals.
Unfortunately, many people pick initiatives a bit more randomly which tends to lead to longer, more expensive implementations, where people quickly lose interest, and that rarely become sustained changes.
Method 1: Organizational Goals and KPIs
This is a simple and straightforward method of prioritization. When you understand the overall goals of the organization and combine that with your leading and lagging KPIs, you should be able to put all the available initiatives into an order that most closely aligns with the organizational goals.
As an example, let’s say one of our organizational goals is to increase our net profits this year. If we are reviewing KPIs and recognize an opportunity for a process improvement initiative within our manufacturing processes due to quality defects, we can prioritize this initiative over another initiative that may be related to turning around customer estimates quicker.
Method 2: Customer and Team Feedback
This method takes a bit more practice to sift through the suggestions and inputs you may be receiving but can deliver very quick and more impactful results, so it is a very powerful method to use. This is a great method to use when you’re just starting out and you’re looking for a few quick wins to build momentum. You still want to have a sense of how these initiatives align with the overall organizational goals but most often when you prioritize initiatives based on customer and team feedback, you’re working through initiatives that are generally lower cost than let’s say an initiative that was identified simply through organizational goals and KPIs.
Method 3: Prioritization Matrix
The final method can be completely standalone or can be combined with the other two methods. I happen to like this combined method because it brings people together to create visual representations that make the priority of the initiatives very clear given the set of inputs that are provided.
Here is an example of a very simple prioritization matrix I created:
You have inputs in columns “B” through “D” rating each input on a scale of 0 – 4. The results are calculated in column “E”.
The higher the results number, the higher the priority should be in implementing that specific initiative. The lower the results number, the lower the priority should be. Again, this is not set in stone but is a great starting point for discussion and final decision making. Another benefit of this particular method is that it helps you maintain visibility of all of the process improvement initiatives that have been identified throughout the organization.
Using any one of these methodologies to prioritize your process improvement initiatives can lead to success for your organization. While there may be no one-size-fits-all answer as to which one to choose, taking the time to develop a plan before committing the resources for the actual process improvement initiative will result in more successful and sustained initiatives for your organization.
That’s it for today.
See you all again next week!
Dave
| Improvement Description | Ease of Implementation | Anticipated Impact | Anticipated Investment | Average |
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