Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Decision Sciences Institute, Washington, D. C. , November 1993
The foundation for any quality improvement program is a thorough understanding of a customer's desired product characteristics. Of equal importance, however, is a complete understanding of the process. By definition, Statistical Process Control (SPC) means the examination and control of process variables, not product variables. Many SPC implementation efforts fail because the connection between product and process variables is not made. This paper presents a multi-level process map approach that can be used by a cross-functional analysis team to examine a process in sufficient detail to identify key process variables. The approach has been used successfully to analyze both manufacturing and service processes. Detailed examples of process maps are used to illustrate the approach.