ISO 9000 - can be a spring board for BPM?
1
I recently read in BPTrends, where in Paul Harmon says:
"In short, BPM is doing very well in Europe.
Where Americans are more likely to jump on each new thing and rush to get a competitive advantage, Europeans typically
study it a bit longer, consider the methodology required to implement the new thing, develop and standardize a methodology,
and then begin to use the new thing in a more systematic way.
And, ISO 9000 is much more integrated into the practices of European companies than it is in the US."
-BPM in Europe, Paul Harmon, Executive Editor, BPTrends
http://www.bptrends.com/
2
How ISO 9000 may be considered one of the factors facilitating adoption of BPM?
One possibility is that implementation of ISO 9000:2000 would have made companies process oriented, though functionally organized,
functioning in a partly computerized and partly manual work environment.
The earlier versions of the Standard promoted
- - the need for company wide realization that ensuring quality of a product is every one's responsibility, directly or indirectly;
- - it enabled a company to achieve ‘consistency' at their current level and
- - plan to move further up gradually, focusing on continual improvement.
The 2000 version promoted ‘process approach' and the catch phrase was ‘Take care of the processes and
the processes will take care of the product!'
And this approach seems to be relevant to management of any other subject too, in addition to quality management,
be it energy management, environment management, software development.
To quote from the Standard:
"Process approach
This International Standard promotes the adoption of a process approach when developing, implementing and improving the effectiveness
of a quality management system, to enhance customer satisfaction by meeting customer requirements.
For an organization to function effectively, it has to identify and manage numerous linked activities.
An activity using resources, and managed in order to enable the transformation of inputs into outputs, can be considered as a process.
Often the output of one process directly forms the input to the next.
The application of system of processes within an organization, together with the identification and interactions of these processes,
and their management, can be referred to as the "process approach".
An advantage of the process approach is the ongoing control that
it provides over the linkage between the individual processes within the system of processes,
as well as their combination and interaction.
When used within a quality management system, such an approach emphasizes the importance of
•a) understanding and meeting requirements,
•b) the need to consider processes in terms of added value,
•c) obtaining results of process performance and effectiveness, and
•d) continual improvement of processes based on objective measurement.
-Extracted from ISO 9000:2000 Standard
The revised version ISO 9000:2008
A visit to the following site would provide greater details as per the revised Standard:
http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/management_standards/iso_9000_iso_14000/iso_9001_2008/concept_a...
Please visit.
3
What Helmut Kruppke said in 2006!
This reminds me of what Helmut Kruppke, CFO, IDS Scheer mentioned, while responding to a question,
"Where do you see the ‘champions' of BPM in companies?"
Kruppke: "...Each company's management has to determine
- whether it is oriented toward processes and
- whether responsibility is transferred from line organization to process owners.
- Companies also need a standard that precisely defines how process management takes place...."
- (SAP INFO September 2006)
4
Hence, a suggestion....
It may be inferred from the above that the ISO 9000 standard has potential to promote process approach systematically
and for companies implementing it for its intrinsic value, it would serve as a spring board to move on to BPM.
Hence, Paul Harmon's observation above, it appears to me, needs a thought by BPXs.
Sam Anbazhagan
