SLACK 4 Process Mapping

Process Mapping Describing processes in terms of how the activities within the process relate to each other

Process Mapping Symbols

Common Process Mapping Symbols

Simple Process Mapping Example

Throughput Time, Cycle Time, Work-In- Progress Throughput Time is the elapsed time between an item entering the process and leaving it. Cycle Time is the average time between items being processed Work-In-Progress (“WIP”) is the number of items within the process at any point in time.

Example Assemble-to-order sandwich shop. The time to assemble and sell a sandwich (the work content) is two minutes. Two people are staffing the process. Each member of staff will serve a customer every two minutes: therefore every two minutes, two customers are being served, and so on average a customer is emerging from the process every minute (the cycle time of the process). When customers join the queue in the process they become work-in- progress (sometimes written as WIP). If the queue is ten people long (including that customer) when the customer joins it, he or she will have to wait ten minutes to emerge from the process.

Example The sandwich shop decides to make some process changes so no customer waits longer than 4 minutes, on average. No more than 10 customers at a time. If the time to assemble and sell a sandwich (from customer request to the customer leaving the process) in the new process has been reduced to 1.2 minutes, how many staff should be serving? Putting this into Little’s law:

Simple Process Mapping Example

A little more complicated Process Mapping Example

Process Mapping – try it (Time permitting) Group 1 – NSU Admissions Group 2 – Academic Advising Group 3 – Tuition/fee Payment Group 4 – Obtaining a Library Card Group 5 – Withdrawing from a course