Introduction:
In an era where everything is ‘fast and furious’, there are times when we miss the fine details. In order to meet deadlines, finish work orders, give daily/hourly reports, a lot of details which matter, are skipped. In manufacturing and service industries, this scenario has become more relevant than ever before. The constant struggle to serve the best quality of products and services is a matter of debate in conferences, summits and the manager’s everyday review meeting. Projects are becoming complex and balancing the trade-offs is becoming more challenging than ever. A Project Manager has to constantly work on how NOT TO miss the details.
What is SIPOC Diagram?
SIPOC is an acronym for Suppliers-Input-Process-Output-Customer, and it is a tool which helps a Project Manager to efficiently plan resources, judiciously plan the processing and realistically set targets considering supplier constraints and consumer expectations for optimum results. The diagrammatic nature of the tool helps a Project Manager and his team to decide what is to be done, when it is to be done, how it is to be done, where it is to be done and who will be doing what task.
The five elements of the SIPOC diagram are discussed below in detail along with an example of a hypothetical Ice Cream manufacturing company:
1. Suppliers:
Any process works with the supply of materials, tools, information, resources, research and development. This component of the SIPOC analysis determines who are the suppliers of resources and where are they located (are they within the company or are they individuals or business organizations). For an Ice Cream manufacturer, departments or companies supplying milk, cream, ice, sugars, emulsifiers, artificial flavorings, technical know-how, packaging and other resources would comprise the ‘Supplier’ component.
2. Input:
Inputs are all the materials, information and other resources that are provided by the suppliers.
3. Process:
The goal of any process is to convert the inputs as provided by the Suppliers into an output. The output could be products, services or information. The processing for an Ice Cream manufacturing company involves multiple steps like blending, pasteurization, homogenization, freezing, ageing, batch storage etc.
4. Output:
The result of processing, as discussed above is an Output. In our case let, the output will be variety of Ices, Ice Creams, and other Ice Cream products like Filled cones, Bars, Take Home Family Packs or novelty items for children.
5. Customers:
The fruition to any processing analysis is focused on who the consumer of the products, services and information are. With reference to our case, Ice Creams are consumed by children, adults of all age groups but specific products may be targeted towards a particular consumer segment. For example, individually wrapped novelty ice creams are targeted for kids below a certain age. Take Home family packs are targeted for people who have large families or who want to stock their Ice Creams for more than a few days.
Conclusion:
It is clear that a SIPOC tool helps the Project Manager to remember everything and eliminate chances of eliminating any aspect of the entire project. Firstly, the tool itself is helpful for resource planning, resource allocation and setting realistic targets. Secondly, the tool is helpful for identifying mistakes that are occurring in the current system. Lastly, SIPOC diagram if used with other statistical tools can be applied making sure that the quality of the product and service is up to mark!
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