Plain language process maps for the people who do the work
The Graham Process Improvement Methodology is a structured approach to improvement that
has helped people simplify, streamline, and develop business process flows for over half a century.
This relates to lower costs, increased revenue and improved service. It is
work simplification adapted to office work.
Enhance your office transformation with Graham Process Improvement methods and tools. Our methods have had close
to seventy years of development and refinement, particularly in information flow, an area that
had been largely ignored until recently. And they work. They are an excellent fit with
Lean and Six Sigma, adding established information workflow improvement
tools to the kit, particularly our detailed process mapping method.
Read the promotional letter for our second Workshop and see what we were offering in 1954!
Graham Process Maps break down business process information flows to INDIVIDUAL documents (forms, records, applications, systems, spreadsheets, email...) whatever is used to capture, transmit or store data.
Enhance your process improvement projects with Graham Process Maps?
Call it a process chart, a flowchart or a process map, it doesn't matter. While they each had a different focus at some point, today the terms are used interchangeably. The earliest description of a process chart was presented by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth in a presentation to members of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1921. They said, "The Process Chart is a device for visualizing a process as a means of improving it." This is a simple, straight-forward, plain-English definition of a process map. Since their introduction about a century ago, process charts have come to have other uses. They are used to quickly understand a process (at least at a high level), they are used for training, and they are used to satisfy audit, regulatory and certification requirements for process documentation and transparency (some better than others). Rather than trying to incorporate these other uses into a definition (and surely leave something out), a simpler description might be used...a tool for visualizing a process.
The tool the Gilbreths used was referred to as a Flow Process Chart or a Process Chart and the method was referred to as Process Charting or Flowcharting. In the 1940's variants of the Flow Process Chart were introduced to office work. The Multi-Column Flow Process Chart highlighted the different work areas that the process flowed through. The Horizontal Process Chart or Procedure Flow Chart took the Flow Process Chart idea and turned it on its side to show multiple flows and their relationships (This method was developed and introduced by Ben S. Graham, Sr. in 1944 and is the method we use today.) Graham Charts or detailed process charts, provide more detail than most, displaying the flows and relationships of all of the many documents that make up a business process. This type of detailed process map provides a deeper level uf process understanding compared with other methods of process mapping.
In the 1960s, Flowcharting came into common usage in computer programming work. More specifically, Program Flowcharts and Data Flowcharts were employed. These computer-related flowcharts, also known as box and arrow flowcharts (where a box referred to an activity or process performed by a computer) used a different set of symbols than the "Process Charts" that were used to document work process flows. By the 1980s, the method and the name had expanded their usage beyond computer flows and into work flows where it sacrificed visibility over individual documents for a simpler single-line flow. The single-line flow led to the resurgence of the multi-column chart, now referred to as a swimlane chart.
GE began Process Mapping in the late 1980s and the term 'process mapping' and the methods worked their way into common usage by the mid-nineties. Originally, Process Maps referred to a hierarchical progression of flowcharts that started out as an overview with just a few steps that could be decomposed to show more and more detail. IDEF0 charts, introduced at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in the 1980s and the Six Sigma approach that starts with a SIPOC chart from which analysts "drill down" to flowcharts with increasingly more detail represent hierarchical approaches to process mapping. Graham Process Maps add a level of clarity to process understanding that isn't available in most maps. They are an excellent addition to the Six Sigma and Lean practitioners' tool box.
Today, while certain flowchart terms bring to mind specific chart variations (i.e. SIPOC chart and Swimlane diagram), the more generic terms Process Chart, Flowchart, and Process Map are interchangeable and cover a wide variation in the symbols used and the level of detail.
