In process improvement, SIPOC or suppliers, inputs, process, outputs and customers (sometimes in the reversed order: COPIS) is a tool that summarizes the inputs and outputs of one or more

business process A business process, business method, or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks performed by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (that serves a particular business g ...

es in table form, with each of the words forming a column in the table used in the analysis. It is used to define a business process from beginning to end before work on process improvement begins.

History

It was in use at least as early as the

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programs of the late 1980s and continues to be used today in

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, and

business process management Business process management (BPM) is the discipline in which people use various methods to Business process discovery, discover, Business process modeling, model, Business analysis, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and Business process auto ...

COPIS variant

To emphasize putting the needs of the customer foremost, the tool is sometimes called COPIS and the process information is filled out in reverse order by starting with the customer and working upstream to the supplier.

Use

The SIPOC is often presented at the outset of process improvement efforts such as

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events or during the "define" phase of the

DMAIC DMAIC or define, measure, analyze, improve and control (pronounced də-MAY-ick) refers to a data-driven improvement cycle used for optimizing and stabilizing business processes and designs. The DMAIC improvement cycle is the core tool used to driv ...

process. It has three typical uses depending on the audience: *To give people who are unfamiliar with a process a high-level overview *To reacquaint people whose familiarity with a process has faded or become out-of-date due to process changes *To help people in defining a new process

Aspects

Several aspects of the SIPOC that may not be readily apparent are: *Suppliers and customers may be internal or external to the organization that performs the process. *Inputs and outputs may be materials, services, or information. *The focus is on capturing the set of inputs and outputs rather than the individual steps in the process.

Mapping

To create a SIPOC diagram, one must first map the overall process in a few steps. Then one must identify process outputs, who will receive them, and what the necessary inputs and suppliers are for each process. The final step is to share the diagram with the stakeholders to evaluate and verify the results.

Example

Notes

References

External links

SIPOC Methodology
Business intelligence terms Quality control tools Supply chain management {{business-term-stub