(The Fourth in the Series-II of ‘The 7 Mavens of SOPs’)
By Dinesh P. Bhrushundi @ dbknowledgey©
Profound Gratitudes from ᵭᵱᵬ’the मितवा’ for Great Response to Series-I and a Grand Welcome to Series-II of ‘The 7 Mavens of SOPs’
As you know by now, ‘ᵭᵱᵬ’ is my initial and ‘मितवा’, a Marathi acronym for Friend, Philosopher and Guide, my humble role to ‘Sit Back and Give Back’, after 4 decades of career-cruise.
Series Title: ‘7 Mavens of SOPs’ is expression for instilling some of my learnings as “seven propositions in sets of seven SOPs (norms)”, befitting the human mental capacity and attention span. Here is the fourth in Series II:
In lighter vein, the business functions can be categorized as Earners (Sales and Marketing), Burners (Operations and allies) and Churners (Finance and Accounts) of money. Ones in the middle always have an instinct of anxiety to perceptibly match their performance with the other two. Adopting SECQuRED (please pronounced as ‘secured’) approach is the perfect panacea against this perception. As seen in the fig., it is a mnemonic with each letter representing the 7Segments Of Performeters or the Performance Measures.
S-Safety righteously tops the chart being the highest priority of any organization, Operations being mostly responsible for it. There are standard common set of measures or Performeters which can be supplemented by some more, specific to the type of activities, to complete this segment. S also goes to represent a sub-segment-Statutory, and few important Performeters must make way in this segment and the others below.
E-Environment obviously comes next, the biggest concern on the earth equally for individuals and industries. Natural resource optimization, use of renewable energy, contribution to GHGs, carbon footprint, recycling/refurbishing, zero effect efforts (e.g. Zero effluent discharge) etc. are some of the contemporary Perfometers to choose from depending on the size and category. Goes without saying, that applicable Statutory Requirements may be reflected in this segment as well.
C-Cost is critical consideration for Operations, where the maximum resources such as people, processes, place, parts etc. are invested and consumed to realize the product or service. This is where its creative contribution can influence the middle line and thus the bottom line favorably. A frugal approach, productivity orientation and ROI mindset is necessitated to contain this segment within the requisite minimum. Perfometers for productivity such as output per unit resource, asset rotations for maximum utilization and Waste Reduction are few examples of this segment. Statutory requirements again feature here too.
Qu-Quality, central to ladder here, is cornerstone of Operations’ endeavors, with its highest accountability. Quality is the journey between the Expectation Parameterization (EP(1)) and Experience Pyramid(EP(2)) of company’s customers. It is a moving goalpost due the very dynamic nature of customer expectations. Thus, the ideal Perfometers in this case should be derived from the two EPs and the processes deployed for converting former into later, along with statutory obligation if any. The targets of Operation’s umbrella program for Ideation, Improvement, and Innovation, too rest here.
R-Responsiveness segment is an assortment of Operation’s aspirations in the area of ‘Awareness’, ‘Reaction’ and ‘Sensitivity’. Typical features of this segment can include with others, the TAT and Takt; SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and OLAs (Operational Level Agreements), measures of proactive interventions, health checks on control processes and periodic review of processes for relevance and recency etc.
E-Engagement addresses two essential elements of an enterprise. First, the people: any amount of focus on Top, middle and hence the Bottom line will be lifeless if this sect, its lifeline, is nonaligned. Second the partners: the very imperative of interdependence merits their camaraderie to survive, live and thrive in ecosystem. Carefully chosen Perfometers in these two areas of engagement will hugely complement the other Performeters.
D-Delivery is positioned at the base of pyramid since it forms the very basis of any business: Delivery of product(s), process(es), service(s) and/or associated promise(s). Design, Development, Deployment precede the Delivery and thus this segment will contain goals and their quantifiers as its Performeters corresponding to completion of each stage.
Prima Facie ‘SECQuRED’ appears to be applicable to Operations in Manufacturing set up, but with appropriate modification it can be adopted for any function in any industry. Display of its dashboard prominently at workplace and regular, multi-tier reviews will always enable the leaders and teams to be Stimulated, Aligned, Focused and Engaged (SAFE)
It is delighting to deliver this article whose deployment will go long way in keeping the readers and realizers SAFE and SECQuRED.
Happy Reading!
Bestest!!
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