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In process improvement, a SIPOC (sometimes COPIS) is a tool that summarizes the inputs and outputs of one or more
process
A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic.
Things called a process include:
Business and management
*Business process, activities that produce a specific se ...
es in
table form. It is used to define a business process from beginning to end before work begins. The acronym SIPOC stands for suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers which form the columns of the table. It was in use at least as early as the
total quality management programs of the late 1980s and continues to be used today in
Six Sigma,
lean manufacturing
Lean manufacturing is a production method aimed primarily at reducing times within the production system as well as response times from suppliers and to customers. It is closely related to another concept called just-in-time manufacturing ( ...
, and
business process management
Business process management (BPM) is the discipline in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes. Any combination of methods used to manage a company's business pro ...
.
To emphasize putting the needs of the customer foremost, the tool is sometimes called COPIS and the process information is filled in starting with the customer and working upstream to the supplier.
The SIPOC is often presented at the outset of process improvement efforts such as
Kaizen
is concept referring to business activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. ''Kaizen'' also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organ ...
events or during the "define" phase of the
DMAIC
DMAIC (an acronym for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) (pronounced də-MAY-ick) refers to a data-driven improvement cycle used for improving, optimizing and stabilizing business processes and designs. The DMAIC improvement cycle is t ...
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*To reacquaint people whose familiarity with a process has faded or become out-of-date due to process changes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
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.
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.
See also
*
Input-Process-Output (IPO) model
*
5 Whys
Five whys (or 5 whys) is an iterative interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem. The primary goal of the technique is to determine the root cause of a defect or problem by repeating ...
*
Value stream mapping
Value-stream mapping, also known as "material- and information-flow mapping", is a lean-management method for analyzing the current state and designing a future state for the series of events that take a product or service from the beginning of ...
*
IDEF
IDEF, initially an abbreviation of ICAM Definition and renamed in 1999 as Integration Definition,IEEE Standard for Functional Modeling Language—Syntax and Semantics for IDEF0, Software Engineering Standards Committee of the IEEE Computer Soci ...
Functional Modelling Language
Notes
References
External links
SIPOC Template
Business terms
Quality control tools
Supply chain management
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