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This podcast offers business solutions to help listeners develop and implement action plans for lean process improvement and implement continuous improvement projects, cost reductions, product quality enhancements, and process effectiveness improvement. Listeners come from many industries in both manufacturing and office applications.
Micheal Parent 0:00
So, when I do a SciPock, I like to start with the customer and understand who they are and what they value, and from there you can look at the outputs of your process. I actually usually do the process last, because I like to get an understanding of the inputs and suppliers. So, once I've defined the I and the O, now that process is very defined in kind of its start and kind of its end. I know what it's producing at the end, and I know where it's starting, and I can have a better understanding of my process, I
Shayne Daughenbaugh 0:46
Hello, and welcome to the next episode of the Lean Solutions Podcast. My name is Shane, and I am joined here by the lovely Katherine. How are you today, Catherine?
Catherine McDonald 0:55
I am very well, Shane. I'm very well. Yes, all going good. How are you?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 0:59
Excellent. I am well, as well, which I think I say every time. You can see I am, I am wearing how I'm feeling right now. Summertime, I got.. I got my.. I don't even know. I picked this up at a Goodwill. I don't.. I don't even know what this is. It's just.. it's something. It feels like summer, which also brings me to today, we have a great guest coming in, who's been on many other podcasts before. I'm excited about what he's going to share with us, and to whet the appetite, I would just want to talk about really the topic of what we're talking about here is not this, but it's simple tools, and I have right here a simple tool. Now, if you're unaware of what this simple tool is, it is - it's a kettlebell, for those of you that can't see on on the audio version of this podcast. Look up Kettlebell real quick, and and I love this tool simply because it gets me ready for just about anything. Now it's summertime, so obviously I'm hoping to make it to a pool or two, I'll probably keep a shirt on, but if I don't, I'd love to, at least you know, look the part of someone who doesn't have a shirt on and looks okay at the pool, but there are all kinds of different things that we have, simple tools, and I'm sure, Katherine, you have lots of them that you have around the house, that or in your life in general, that you use that sometimes we don't even think about just because just we just grab it, we use it today. We're going to talk about a simple tool that sounds really awkward because it's an acronym, but I don't want to, I don't want to give it away just yet. But I'd love Catherine, for you to introduce our guest. Who do we have coming on today?
Catherine McDonald 2:41
Yes, so to talk about Sypunk today, we have Michael Parents, and let me tell you a little bit about Michael. So, hi Michael. Michael is a leader and a coach with expertise in leading change and mentoring executives towards operational excellence. He specializes in operational excellence through quantitative methods using Lean Six Sigma quality simulation, and plenty of others. He also has plenty of qualifications, way too many to name, but he doesn't search by Lean Six Sigma back belt. He has an MBA, and a whole list of other. You can look at them all. Michael's work includes strategy formulation, operational planning, and execution, and continuous improvement, and what's interesting is his diverse industry background allows him to quickly identify operational gaps, align stakeholders, and implement sustainable solutions that deliver measurable business impact, which is what we all want. Michael, how's it
Micheal Parent 3:39
going? It's going very well. Thanks for having
Catherine McDonald 3:41
me. It's a very specific one, and Shane said it's on a specific tool, so I am really interested to get your take on this. So, let us first of all explain to people listening what it is to talk about anybody who has heard of before. Tell us a little bit, Michael. Just what is it? What does it stand for as well? And just, just break down what it means, what kind of what tool is that we're talking about today.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 4:12
Yeah,
Micheal Parent 4:13
yeah. So Side Poc is, I would put it in the domain of process mapping. So if you think of a high level process map or a value stream map. This is like a cousin to that, or relative of that. And what Sybox stands for is it stands for suppliers, inputs, process outputs, customers, and it is a way to understand a process at a very, very high level. And why I like this tool so much is for me this is a very logical starting point in doing process improvement, as you're working through an A three, going through the background, going through a current state, understanding the SIPoC really helps you from the get go scope out what it is you're talking. Talking about in terms of the process, but also in terms of the stakeholders, and kind of getting at least a high level understanding of what you're looking at and why you're looking at it, and what's being transformed in this process that we're talking about.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 5:17
Right? Can Michael, can you give, can you give me some specifics of how, how is how a SIPoC scopes things. I mean, for some of our listeners, they're not lean practitioners, and maybe this word kind of doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but how does a SIPOC give scope, and what benefit does it have? Because you also mentioned understanding who the key stakeholders are. I mean, all of that sounds great, but it's an acronym, so tell me where all those come in.
Micheal Parent 5:46
Yeah, great, great question. So the SIPOC is very, very helpful because it gives you a specific terminus to what you're interested in investigating. What can go wrong if you think of process improvement projects is you can have scope creep where we start talking about one process and then slowly that morphs into this thing that's kind of related, kind of not related, but let's go ahead and include it, and maybe that's a different customer, maybe that's a different process, but it feels kindred to what we're talking about, so it just naturally creeps upon itself. The SIPoC really protects against that sort of failure mode, because it allows us to define very specifically what the outputs are that we're driving towards and delivering value to the customer, so it is a visual process mapping tool, which is we're kind of talking ambiguously about what the SIPoC is. It is this this kind of high-level tool that fits into like five categories: suppliers, inputs, process outputs, customers, and essentially what people do is they go through each of these categories, and they write out what this is. Who are my suppliers? What are the inputs that I'm transforming in this process? What is the process itself? Is it a sequence of steps? What's the output? What does the customer get at the end of this process? And then lastly, the customer itself, who are these people, what are they receiving?
Catherine McDonald 7:26
Do does that mean you start with the process then, because you have to know what you're talking about before you start a site park, so it does. Suppliers then go in, put them across, or you actually say, okay, this is the process that we wanted to break down to get a high level view of less than now. We look at our suppliers' input process. Well,
Micheal Parent 7:46
how I like to do it is, if we go back to what Lean is. Lean is all about defining value and optimizing value and removing waste. We know that value is seen in the eyes of the customer, it's defined by the customer themselves, so when I do a SIPoC, I always try to start with who the customer is, and then work backwards, so maybe it can be a CO PIS, I don't know. Anyway, I like to start with the customer and understand who they are and what they value, and from there you can look at the outputs of your process and say, Okay, how does this relate to what they value? Maybe this is, we don't even need to do a process improvement process, we just really need to focus on this relationship between what we're delivering to our customer and what they expect and what they need, and so on and so forth. I actually usually do the process last, because I like to get an understanding. Yeah, I like to get an understanding of the outputs.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 8:54
Okay, I like to
Micheal Parent 8:55
get an understanding of the inputs and suppliers, and then the way I see the process is it is a step of transformation. I'm taking inputs, I'm transforming them into the outputs. So, once I've defined the I and the O,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 9:13
now that process is very defined in kind of its start and kind of its end. I know what it's producing at the end, I know where it's starting, and I can have a better understanding of my process by doing that. Heretic, that's it, that's unorthodox. I can't say, because I don't know how other people.. I know that there's variations, though. So, Catherine, you mentioned something different, though, when you asked Michael, like he starts with keeping the customer forward facing and in the front, I, I love that concept, but I am, I am, I think I'm gonna hear, let me hear how you do it, because I think I may, I may practice it the way you do. So, how do you..
Catherine McDonald 9:54
well, do you know what it's the way we.. I was told, and I suppose I should be questioning and challenging that. Little bit more, shouldn't I, but the way we were taught was, let's say, and I think this is because I work internally in companies, is where I've always done it, so a company sees the problem internally first, so I would have been taught to link that problem to the process, so for example, I work in, let's say, a hairdresser, right, and the hairdressers have a problem whereby there's wastage of products, right, or the costs are too high, or whatever product they're using, and they want to reduce that down, but they honestly don't know how, or haven't thought about how. So one of the first things we do is, well, we look at, well, what exactly, what process are we talking about here? So you're then we're trying to figure out, okay, well, really we're talking about the process of, you know, mixing the color, doing the hair, and cleaning up, and then as you're doing the hair, how much more color you use. Well, we have not done the process yet, we're just, we've just decided what the issue is, what process it's linked to, and then we start with the S and the I, and then we put the steps of the process down, and then go I
Catherine McDonald 11:06
and C,
Catherine McDonald 11:07
yeah,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 11:09
really, even yet, so, so, yes, I love all of these, because I, it, the end result is really what's important, like in understanding the customer, understanding what the process is, all of that, and I love how Catherine, for you, hey there, how you mentioned there's, there's a process to this, what is that process? So I will start, and how I was trained was starting with the P in the middle, so you have the S I P O C right across the top, starting with the P, that's where we started with the process, because that's going to give me the scope to what you were talking about, Michael. So, what are the steps? What are the high-level steps? The first, you know, one, not the first, but one to five, you know, steps of that. And I have my teams write that out, so that we understand this is the scope. Is there anything else? Because if we can always add more, but try to keep it high level, and then we go outward. Then we go, okay, from this process, what's the output? Who's the customer of that? Who's the supplier? What's what is the input they give to the process? Now I, and I think we use it that way, because where I learned it was at the state of Nebraska, when I was working for the state, and that made most sense to the people we are working with, and so I will tell anyone, in just about any tool you have, make sure the tool that you're using makes sense to the people that have to use
Catherine McDonald 12:34
it, you
Shayne Daughenbaugh 12:35
know what's going to make most sense to them, and so that's how I do, I, so I start with a P, Michael. You start with a C, and Catherine, you
Catherine McDonald 12:45
P as well. It's the P as well. Yeah, yeah. But okay, so Michael, you heard with Shane and I, it look, it's likely you get, you know, still value out of it, just doing it different ways, and at the same time, we're all making this using it as a sort of a visual tool to get an understanding of what we need to do differently, right? So, tell us a little bit, because another question I have is, regardless of the way you do it, when do you introduce it? Because I've seen it introduced at the very beginning, I've seen it introduced in the middle, and sometimes I think we jump into doing it because, oh, we should do this, we should do this, you know, it's going to look good, it's going to make everything clear, but then the side pok is thrown aside and we're into a process mapping exercise, and just isn't used. So, tell us a little bit about at what point do you use it?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 13:40
Yeah,
Micheal Parent 13:40
yeah, you know, I'm afraid to say anything now. You guys are gonna tell me I'm doing it wrong at all. I certainly like to use it as early as possible. It's one of my initial tools that I get into. If we follow the A three format, which, for those who are unfamiliar, it's background, current conditions, goals, and targets. You jump into the analysis phase, move that to the implement phase, and then follow up with the control and monitor, and that's essentially the flow of the A three. I like to use it somewhere between the background and the current conditions. The background is going to help you kind of, you're still in that, in that process of scoping things out, storming and norming what this process actually is, what this project is about. And then the current conditions to me is really about figuring out with process thinking what are we actually talking about what is actually going on, and the way I like to use the SIPoC is I see it as kind of a 30,000 foot view of our process. It helps us scope it, as we've talked about. I, I then I think, as you were saying, Catherine, one of the things away. How you can go wrong is to treat it as its own thing, as its own appendage, and to me it is so much more of the initial start of the process mapping activities, so the SIPoC, as well, just to kind of throw some variations in there. I also like to get how often this process is happening. I like to get the trigger. How does this process start? Right, what's initiating this? How do I know that this is the thing I have to do, and what does this trigger next? And how does it trigger that? Right, so I, that kind of rounds out the scoping conversation. I then move it into the high level process map that you typically see with kind of more six sigma type stuff and less of the lean, but Shane, this is kind of what you were talking about. Is let's start with the high level process map, a couple boxes. I see the high level process map is kind of like the 10,000 foot view, and then you can take that really, really in depth, and do your value stream mapping right, and then that's going to get you through a good chunk of the current conditions, and so on and so forth. I just, just to hear myself talk a little bit further, you can take this further and drive it into the analysis phase. You can use the suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, cost customers as branches of your fishbone diagram, and actually criticize things like that, or even use the high level process map steps rather than doing your traditional man machine mother nature material and method, so all kinds of variations, it's like a Reese's peanut butter cup, right? There's no wrong way,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 16:44
and I love how you said you talked about how to use it, you know, how it's still used, useful later on, because we will often use it, you know, not just in the high level of, or I should say, we, when, when I was working for the state, how we used it was, it gave us that high level view, you know, and it also gave us the scope, but the customers, those key stakeholders, are we would then put, take that and create, if needed, create a stakeholder analysis, like trying to understand, hey, How many people does this touch? You know, how many people do we need to either involve it helps you understand who needs to be, if this is going to be a project, who needs to be part of the project team, who needs to be informed, you know, who has responsibilities that they need to know that, hey, we're going to be Michael, we're going to be meddling in your process, just a little bit helping improve it. We just want you to know that what do you have to say about it? You know, it gives us an opportunity. That's one of the, one of the things that we use. It gives us an opportunity to create that stakeholder analysis. So, I love, I love how it can be useful, not just at the beginning, but even throughout it. So, when I come up with a communication plan with the team we will then go back to the side, and say, here's, here's your customers. How are you going to communicate with all of these people? Some of them could simply be an email, some of them should probably be face to face, some of them, you know, whatever. There's just lots of ways to do it, but yeah,
Micheal Parent 18:15
yeah, excellent. You know, I bet that reminds me, too, is when you do the stakeholder analysis, right. You typically see that, hey, these outputs that this process is producing, people are using them different ways, typically. Right, is you'll have one process output, maybe it's a report, and a business line leader is going to use that very differently than an analyst or something like that, even though you're producing the same output, it's going to be used in wildly different ways.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 18:44
Yeah, yeah. So, if you're going to change it, you should probably see how it's being used before you change it. Yeah, excellent. So, so Michael, what are.. what are some of that we've talked about? There's different variations of using it. There's.. there's different advantages to using it and using it throughout the project, the improvement project, or you know, just the mentality of improving things. What are some common mistakes that you have seen that people make when creating a SIPOC?
Micheal Parent 19:13
Yeah, I think the first one we've kind of touched on is treating it as its own isolated tool, right? Is I think that's exactly the wrong way to do it. This isn't just something to add to the project portfolio and give it to someone, say, "Hey, look, I did a SIPoC. To me, the purpose of the SIPoC is to gain understanding about what it is you're doing. It's also there to kind of protect the project management side of things, but certainly I think having an understanding that what we're trying to do is gain more knowledge of the current process. I think that's certainly ways where this can go wrong. I would also say that losing focus of the customer on. On this is, is quite possibly one of the ways it also fails, as you've mentioned, you all both use the process first, and I think typically a lot of this process mapping sort of thing is prone to this sort of error, where you get so in the weeds of the process, you get so process-minded of what's the cycle time? What's the lead time? Who's where the work allocations, you know, all these sorts of kind of inside baseball stuff. When you're talking about process mapping, it's very important to always draw it back to the customer, always understand how they're defining value, and that's of course, as I said, why I like to start with the customer first.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 20:39
Right? Yeah, Catherine, what about from your experience? Just
Catherine McDonald 20:43
I'm wondering, if you start with the customer, if is that.. I mean, okay, you're saying you're kind of maybe linking it to an A tree, so you're linking, you're starting with the customer in a very specific way, linked to something very specific that you want to change or improve. Yeah,
Micheal Parent 20:57
yeah,
Catherine McDonald 20:58
yeah, okay, that's fine. We're not just doing a sidewalk concern with customers that could go on forever used a very honorary specific issue that also is a very theory defined problem. It
Micheal Parent 21:15
occurs to me as well that a lot of the projects I work on, there's not necessarily a process defined in place. We know it's almost like entrepreneurial, I think. A lot of businesses are like this. It's like we know that we do this thing right, and it seems to work for us. People pay us for it, that seems, you know, value added, but they have not really thought through the steps to take there, so if you understand first, with okay, what, what are you actually providing to the customer? Who is this person that's paying you for this thing? What is this thing that you're producing for them? Okay, now we understand what it is we're focused on. Let's understand what it actually takes to produce, and that's that's kind of why I started to work, I think that really
Catherine McDonald 22:03
helps to keep what is actually valuable. Obviously, customer wants to come out with glowing hair, with, you know, feeling great, looking great, but exactly just like Shane's beard there, that he's, you know, brushing customer, the customer's needs have to be met, but we can't compromise on our own internal ways of doing things to give the customer that we have to obviously be doing our work in the most efficient and effective way. So, I think when you start with the customer, you won't lose any of that, but you'll still then be able to work on the parts we can work on and control that will still add as much value as the customer needs, so yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense down as
Micheal Parent 22:45
well as you start with this IPOC, and then see that as just the natural starting point of those more detailed process mapping activities that value eventually fleshes itself out when you get, you know, to the the value streams, or so on and so forth.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 23:03
So, let me ask both of you a question. Because the way that I was taught, again, there's different variations of this, and they all work, especially in specific areas. One of the mistakes that we were taught to guard against is having too many people in the room when you do a SIPoC, because then you have all of these different ideas, and things are popping up and going all over the place. They could also, without having the right people in the room, you might have some naysayers that take it, and you know, try to try to sink your project in the first place. That was one of the things, one of the common mistakes that they tried to guard us against, does that, does that line up with how you guys do a SIPoC? It's not the more people the better when it comes to a SIPOC. We wanted, when we did a SIPOC, we wanted, you know, maybe the sponsor, maybe the process owner, maybe one or two of those, but it was a small group of people doing it's not the whole project team. I don't want nine people in the room trying to do a SIPOC. Does that line up with what you guys have practiced as well?
Catherine McDonald 24:11
Michael,
Micheal Parent 24:12
yeah, certainly. I think you're right. There's a critical mass where things stop being efficient and stop being helpful. My project teams, or maybe not the project team, but the people who I want in the SIPoC, I want the sponsor in there, so they kind of can kind of see what's going on. Then I'm kind of looking for three different people. One is the historian. Tell me, how we got here. These people are not necessarily the process owners, but they might be like it. Maybe they're the people who put the workflow in place, maybe they're like a subject matter expert on maybe working like a ServiceNow workflow or a Salesforce workflow. Get the people in there that know the limitations, they know where the compromises have been in the. Past, and they can kind of explain how we've gotten here, and then I like to get the what you call the extreme user. These are people who are working at a very, very high level, and they're doing it in such a way that they're interfacing with a lot of the constraints of the current system, and that, and they're so active and so engaged that they probably already identified a number of solutions, or hey, just move this here, we would be more efficient. I like to get them involved, because they're going to come up and they're going to own a lot of the improvements later on. And then, lastly, I like to get just kind of the average operator, right? So I'm going to go to the extreme operator to get all of my insights and understanding, but I want to design it not for that extreme operator, but I want to design it for, you know, Joe Six Pack. It's kind of like Nike, right? Nike is going to go and they're going to sponsor all of these elite runners to learn about the thresholds of different materials and how their shoe is constructed, and then they're going to try to sell it to Shane, who's trying to get ready for a summer body. That's, that's kind of, you know, at least having those three or four people in the room, I think, is really helpful.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 26:20
Yeah, interesting.
Catherine McDonald 26:21
Yeah,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 26:22
I like that.
Catherine McDonald 26:23
Yeah,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 26:23
Catherine, any..
Catherine McDonald 26:25
I agree with all of that. In terms of who needs to be in the room, generally for a sidewalk, I think that is where you would bring in the, I suppose, the sponsor, or as I mostly work with just senior leader or manager who's involved, and because then they won't have to be involved in all of the workshops or any of the other work that's going on, once they're clear on what we're doing, and the other thing I do, which works really well, is so I'll do a sidewalk at, let's say, leadership team level, and then, and then I will do the exact same sidewalk of the exact same issue or improvement at frontline level, and then I'll take them, and I'll compare the two, and I'll show them the differences, but I'll tell them in advance this is going to be shared with the next team, and then at the end, I'll show them both, and the realizations that your people have when they look at the two, and at that, wow, you know, we really don't interact the way we could be interacting here, and maybe there's room for improving here after all, and that's actually that actually really helps that wise, yeah, mindset wise to get them on the behind the improvements, yeah. Anyway, that's just a little thing I'll throw in, but Michael, we don't have too long left with you, so I would like, if you could, for us, just give us maybe an example of something that might resonate with a lot of different, different companies in different industries, an example of how you use a sidepock, maybe something kind of common that you've mapped out with people before, and just talk us through, like, okay, what were the suppliers, what were the inputs, what was the process in a few steps, and what were the outputs, and what was the customer, just one or two points on each one, just to leave people feeling really crystal clear on what a good side park might look like.
Micheal Parent 28:06
Sure, so if you, if you're familiar with coffee, I have it every morning, and you know that's something that is process oriented and lends itself very nicely to the side park. So, if you think, let's start with a customer, it's me. What do I want? What do I value in my cup of coffee? Well, I drink it black, so that means my inputs are not going to have milk, it's not going to have sugar, I'm not going to have a stirring step, right, because how I'm defining value might be different from someone else. But anyway, I'm hoping for a hot cup of coffee in my hands. Okay, so now my output is that hot cup of black coffee. So, what are the processes it takes to make that? Well, let's skip over that for a moment and go to the inputs. What am I going to need to create this cup of coffee. Well, I'm going to need a coffee machine. I'm going to need some water. I'm going to need coffee filters. I'm going to need a coffee grinder, perhaps. And you know, of course, the coffee beans, coffee
Shayne Daughenbaugh 29:14
beans,
Micheal Parent 29:15
of course, right. And then my suppliers, you know, depending on on how snobby I want to get it, could be Folgers, it could be, you know, some farm in Brazil that I like to source my beans from, and I'm going to have suppliers associated with each one of those things, where I get my filters from, if I have a mr. Coffee machine, and so on and so forth. All of the inputs will have their own suppliers, and then, of course, the process is just how you actually transform these inputs into this output, so for you know, I'm going to grind my beans, I'm going to put the filter in the coffee machine, I'm going to put the bean, the ground beans into the coffee machine, fill it with water, and hit the button and let it drip through. So that's kind of it in a nutshell, what this IPOC is a. I think you can kind of see in this example, why I like to start with the customer, right? Is if you like drinking coffee with milk or with a little bit of sugar, your process is going to look a little bit different, your inputs are going to look a little bit different too, but it's all because of how the customer is defining value,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 30:16
right? Right. So, in that example, what I thought about in your case, and in those that like black coffee, then because so the input is actually more important. It may be more important for you than a customer that just, you know, doesn't matter. I just, I want to put a little milk in there, a little bit of sugar, so it's critically important to have good quality source beans, is the input much more than it would be, you know, if I'm going to put cream and sugar in it, then it may not matter to me. I mean, folders might just be fine, or I don't want to bag on folders, but you know, just a supermarket brand, whatever. Yeah, you know, so that's interesting. I can see how that understanding of what the customer wants, what the customer values will greatly impact, should impact the process and the inputs, and yeah, some of that. So,
Micheal Parent 31:06
yep,
Catherine McDonald 31:08
okay. But we're out of time. So, Shane,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 31:14
all right. Well, thank you so much, Michael. If people want to get a hold of you, I'm assuming in this day and age, they can find you on LinkedIn.
Micheal Parent 31:23
Yes, of course, you can find me on LinkedIn. I also have a Substack where I write about kind of these sorts of topics and systems thinking, systems design. So, go find me on LinkedIn, and then follow a link to get to my Substack.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 31:36
Okay, and for those of you that aren't in the video, Michael Parent is just like it sounds, is how you're going to find him in LinkedIn, like Mom and
Catherine McDonald 31:46
Dad,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 31:46
just like, thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, for giving us some of your time for listening. We hope that you were able to glean something from this, that it was actually a value and helpful to you. If you have any questions, we would always love any kind of comments to this in whatever platform you're watching or listening to this in. Throw some comments, throw some questions if you want more follow up. We need to hear that. So, thank you for your time again. Have yourself a great day, Catherine. Thank you, Michael. Thank you so much for everyone, for being here. We will see you next time.