Process Improvement Framework Research Articles

Leading Innovation to Improve Complex Process Performances by Systematic Problem Analysis with TRIZ

Complex organizational processes are subject to many dynamic attractors and influence factors. They generate a multitude of obstacles in the framework of process improvement. Application of traditional tools of process improvement cannot lead to significant evolution of process maturity and capability. Even the use of TRIZ-related tools has limitations in defining an ideal solution because in complex adaptive nonlinear systems optimality cannot be achieved. Therefore, an enhanced way of applying TRIZ for process improvement projects is considered in this paper. The proposed algorithm identifies the pool of obstacles and applies TRIZ in relation with each obstacle. Afterwards, a strategy is considered to handle a long list of inventive principles for generating and ordering appropriate improvement projects. The proposed algorithm is successfully tested in the case of a company dealing with software development services. Results demonstrates the concept effectiveness and reveals that active improvement of complex processes requires a well-scheduled implementation of a well-directed package of interrelated and convergent improvement projects.

Function-Oriented Business Process Improvement Framework for Customer Relationship Management Section in Large Scale Organization

Function-Oriented Business Process Improvement Framework for Customer Relationship Management Section in Large Scale Organization

A process capability based assessment model for software workforce in emergent software organizations

Software process improvement frameworks for software organizations enable to identify opportunities for improving the processes as well as establishing road maps for improvement. However, software process improvement practice showed that to achieve a sustained, leveraged state, software organizations need to focus on the workforce as much as the process. Software process improvement frameworks address the people dimension indirectly through processes. To complement process assessment models/methods, there is a need of mechanisms that address the problem of “how to assess, identify and prioritize detailed skill and knowledge improvement needs in relation to roles and processes of software organizations”. In this study, we developed a Software Workforce Assessment Model (SWAM) for emergent software organizations to perform role based workforce skill assessment aligned with software processes by coupling SW-CMM and SWEBOK models. SWAM is developed in accordance with the widely accepted assessment and evaluation theory principles. It is composed of an assessment baseline for software roles, criteria and scales for assessment. A SWAM based assessment process uses specific techniques such as Euclidian distance and dendogram diagrams to obtain useful results from data obtained from assessments. Through a case study, SWAM is shown to be applicable and the results are valuable for an emergent software organization. Specifically, the assessment enables the organization to identify priority knowledge units, to decide the extent of trainings for groups of individuals, to effectively assign project roles, to identify improvement priorities for the practitioners related to their roles and finally facilitates enactment and improvement of the software processes.

Developing and evaluating a framework for process improvement in an alliance project: a New Zealand case study

‘Lean thinking’ holds out the promise of dramatic improvements in construction production processes, especially in waste minimization. While there exist empirical studies of ‘leanness’ with regard to non-relational-type projects, there is a need to analyse its applicability in relational contexts, such as an alliance. The application of ‘lean’ to a project alliance in a viaduct replacement in New Zealand is investigated here. The primary objective is to define a framework to streamline improvements in processes and to verify the applicability of the defined framework to a real construction alliance project. Participant observations, project documentation and action research meetings were used to collect data on the waste identification and elimination processes. The findings indicate that the construction work in a project alliance can be improved considerably by eliminating or reducing waste. Moreover, the savings are substantial, as the processes investigated were cyclic and repetitive. This framework is equally suited to waste detection and improvements at the site level. Project organizations should detect needs and opportunities for process change and transform processes accordingly. The current lack of any waste elimination technique, which could provide a significant competitive advantage for industry participants, has been established. Organizational conditions exist in project alliances that help to disseminate and sustain the lean concept.

Leveraging Expertise to Support Scientific Software Process Improvement Decisions

As the complexity of scientific software increases, scientists are often expected to be experts in their own domain as well as in the construction and maintenance of their software. To support this paradigm, numerous specialized approaches have emerged. Leveraging the underlying expertise and motivational factors that drive scientific software development practices, the authors are developing a hybrid scientific software process improvement framework (SciSPIF) to allow scientific software developers to self-drive' their SE process improvement activities according to their own goals. Here, the authors report on the strategy for designing and building SciSPIF and provide preliminary insights.

Proposal and practice of software process improvement framework – Toshiba's software process improvement history since 2000

SUMMARYFor the effective promotion of software process improvement (SPI) activities in a large organization, it is necessary to establish an organizational structure and a deployment method for promotion and to develop training courses, support tools, and other materials. Even if an organizational promotion system is established, the SPI activities of each development department cannot be promoted effectively without an SPI community. To promote SPI activities throughout Toshiba Group, we organized a Corporate Software Engineering Process Group in April 2000. We also proposed an SPI framework. This framework extracts the features of organizations in which improvement activities were successful in the 1990s and combines them systematically. For over 10 years, we have been constructing Toshiba's SPI framework based on the SPI framework that we proposed and promoting process improvement activities using it. As a result, maturity levels were improved in many development departments, and the applicability of the SPI framework has been confirmed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Integrated Security Process Improvement Framework for Systems and Services

Security of systems and services has been dominant research area in recent years as today's cloud services, big data and networked systems, especially when they provide wireless application access where personal and confidential data to be transmitted across the networked systems. Numerous tools and technologies are available to ensure system's security; however, external threats to computer systems and applications residents thereon, are also becoming more and more sophisticated and on the increase. Therefore, the key aim of this research is to integrate security engineering techniques and process with systems development life-cycle and process improvement frameworks. This paper presents a framework that consists of two components: 1) a security assessment model to looks at the existing security infrastructure of an organisation to determine its security maturity level; and 2) a security improvement maturity model to suggest an improvement mechanism for the organisation to progress from one maturity level to the next higher level. The intention is to provide a scheme to improve the organisation's Systems and network security with the aim that it becomes more efficient and effective than before.

DEVELOPING CORE SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS OF ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR SMART CAMPUS WITH ADVANCED SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Higher educational institutions such as universities provide campus data and information to stakeholders such as students, faculty staff, administrators, media, and community members. They also analyze such data and information for decision making, planning and continuous improvement. They obtain necessary capabilities for collecting, providing and analyzing data and information by acquiring products and services from suppliers or by developing products and services by themselves. As in today’s social infrastructure, software plays an important role and software seems to keep growing in its scope, size and complexity in infrastructure of educational institutions. However, many organizations have not invested in the capabilities necessary to effectively manage life-cycle process for such software products and services. We argue that software engineering techniques, such as process improvement framework and software product line engineering are important in developing requirements and systems effective in continuous improvement. In this paper, we discuss a trial case to improve the energy management system in our campus, as an emerging area of institutional continuous improvement, by using software engineering techniques under the goal of increasing the awareness and involvement of members for smart energy management.

Everything Is 5S: A Simple yet Powerful Lean Improvement Approach Applied in a Preadmission Testing Center

Payment models pressure hospitals to optimize operational efficiency by doing better with fewer resources. Lean thinking provides the foundation for addressing these constraints. The use of approachable lean tools and methods offers the ability for organizations to improve rapidly. This paper uses 5S (sort, store, shine, standardize, sustain) as a framework for process design and improvement in the healthcare sector. A pre-admission testing center applied 5S to the patient flow process, streamlining steps and eliminating waste. Results show that the 5S framework is an effective and simple model for process design and improvement. The systematic lean approach should be applied to healthcare processes in order to accelerate the rate of change.

Industrial Application of a Continuous-Time Scheduling Framework for Process Analysis and Improvement

We investigate the potential benefits of applying short-term continuous-time scheduling optimization to an industrial multiproduct food processing plant. The facility exhibits several unique production policies that are not supported by current continuous-time scheduling models. Several extensions to a general global event continuous-time scheduling model are proposed to address these limitations. In addition, problem knowledge is exploited to develop an aggregate reformulation of the model for application to the target problem. The potential benefits of scheduling optimization are assessed through several case studies. Historical plant performance is benchmarked, and the possible gains in production efficiency are highlighted. In addition, the scheduling models are used to evaluate potential benefits of operating policy and plant configuration changes.

Successful strategies for the reduction of operating room turnover times in a tertiary care academic medical center

BackgroundTurnover time (TOT) is one of the classic measures of operating room (OR) efficiency. There have been numerous efforts to reduce TOTs, sometimes through the employment of a process improvement framework. However, most examples of process improvement in the TOT focus primarily on operational changes to workflows and statistical significance. These examples of process improvement do not detail the complex organizational challenges associated with implementing, expanding, and sustaining change. MethodsTOT data for general and gastrointestinal surgery were collected retrospectively over a 26-mo period at a large multispecialty academic institution. We calculated mean and median TOTs. TOTs were excluded if the sequence of cases was changed or cases were canceled. Data were retrieved from the perioperative nursing data entry system. ResultsUsing performance improvement strategies, we determined how various events and organizational factors created an environment that was receptive to change. This ultimately led to a sustained decrease in the OR TOT both in the general and gastrointestinal surgery ORs that were the focus of the study (44.8 min versus 48.6 min; P < 0.0001) and other subspecialties (49.3 min versus 53.0 min; P < 0.0001), demonstrating that the effect traveled outside the study area. ConclusionsThere are obstacles, such as organizational culture and institutional inertia, that OR leaders, managers, and change agents commonly face. Awareness of the numerous variables that may support or impede a particular change effort can inform effective change implementation strategies that are “organizationally compatible.”

An Evolutionary Framework for Process Improvement

Process improvement methods such as Six Sigma and Lean Management have become prominent and effective elements of operations management. However, few conceptual frameworks have been offered for explicating their organizing principles and operative mechanisms. In this paper, it is argued that process improvement can be represented with an evolutionary model in which improvement is viewed as the adaptation of an operational system to its environment. Using evolutionary concepts and theories which have been extensively applied in organizational research, a variation-selection-retention (VSR) framework for process improvement is proposed. Various features of process improvement methods are identified, described, and contrasted within the VSR framework. Implications for the development of testable hypotheses are explored and future research opportunities are described.

Value-chain oriented identification of indicators to establish a comprehensive process improvement framework

• The process development and optimization potential needs to be driven by the individial coporate value chain. • The identification of this specific value chain and the related indicators is essential to limit the scope of any analysis and optimization to the core business • The process framework consisting of clearly defined value chain, the related processes and the corresponding indicators is a pre-requisite for a meaningful and efficient process analysis and continuous process optimization.

A case study of software process improvement with CMMI‐DEV and Scrum in Spanish companies

ABSTRACTOne of the most commonly used agile methods is Scrum. Capability Maturity Model Integration for Development (CMMI‐DEV) is currently the de facto framework for process improvement and for determining the organizational maturity of software development companies. CMMI‐DEV and Scrum share certain characteristics, and even though they were developed for different purposes, they can be complementary to each other; and as such, they are not in competition. This paper presents a case study of the relationship between level 2 of CMMI‐DEV 1.3 and Scrum. This research has focused on the relationships between Scrum and level 2 of CMMI‐DEV 1.3. The objective of this research paper is to evaluate how Scrum helps implement a process model such as CMMI‐DEV.A detailed case study was conducted among Spanish IT companies. The case study was designed according to established guidelines for cases studies. There were eight principal activities: case study design, case selection, case study procedures and roles, data collection, analysis, plan validity, study limitations, and reporting.The results obtained show that most of the process areas of CMMI‐DEV level 2 had been improved by using Scrum. Other issues detected arose during the formal appraisals and illustrated how it is possible to verify with Scrum that the specific goals of CMMI‐DEV have been implemented. In addition, it highlights how the use of open‐source tools was useful in improving the process in the companies involved. Based on the case study carried out, the addition of Scrum methodologies may improve the increase in quality of software processes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Enhancing ISO/IEC 15288 with reuse and product management: An add-on process reference model

To support the transformation of system engineering from the project-based development of highly customer-specific solutions to the reuse and customization of ‘system products’, we integrate a process reference model for reuse- and product-oriented industrial engineering and a process reference model extending ISO/IEC 12207 on software life cycle processes with software- and system-level product management. We synthesize the key process elements of both models to enhance ISO/IEC 15288 on system life cycle processes with product- and reuse-oriented engineering and product management practices as an integrated framework for process assessment and improvement in contexts where systems are developed and evolved as products.

Hospice Patient Evacuation

This study was conducted to provide lessons learned from the experience of a small, rural hospice care organization to an actual crisis that required evacuation of the facility. A process improvement framework using the emergency response certification guidelines was used to first provide details of the incident, second analyze the effectiveness of disaster planning and response in response to an actual crisis, and third discuss the post-event review, lessons learned, and process improvement. This case study revealed 5 emerging themes-disaster can happen at the most inopportune times, facilities should focus on the most likely hazards, written agreements are needed even in small tight-knit communities, redundancy of resources is needed, and disaster planning and response is a process that should be continually improved.

QRP: A CMMI Appraisal Tool for Project Quality Management

Organizations adopt software process improvement (SPI) frameworks for developing higher-quality software more efficiently. CMMI is one of the most widely used SPI frameworks; however, software tools that provide a higher automation level are required. In this paper, the QRP platform, which guides and evaluates conformance to a CMMI level, is presented. The main innovation provided by the platform is the automation of the CMMI level assessment using evidences collected during day-to-day project development, facilitating the appraisal of CMMI to a great extent.

Using Taxonomy Comparative Analysis for the Unification of Process Improvement Frameworks

Using Taxonomy Comparative Analysis for the Unification of Process Improvement Frameworks

Software metrics for effective project management

Metrics definition and analysis method selection is often not accorded due importance. Metrics and analysis methods are routinely selected to satisfy requirements of software process improvement frameworks such as CMMI. Considerable time and effort is spent in collecting metrics and analyzing them without realizing the benefits of the measurement and analysis effort. This may be attributed to inadequate understanding of the link between the selected metrics and the underlying processes. The inappropriate selection of analysis method may also be due to lack of understanding about the desired monitoring and control actions. This paper discusses the benefits of choosing appropriate metrics and analysis method based on observations in several organizations. It also discusses the pitfalls of choosing wrong metrics.

Formal quality improvement curriculum and DMAIC method results in interdisciplinary collaboration and process improvement in renal transplant patients

BackgroundBroad-based formal quality improvement curriculum emphasizing Six Sigma and the DMAIC approach developed by our institution is required for physicians in training. DMAIC methods evaluated the common outcome of postoperative hyponatremia, thus resulting in collaboration to prevent hyponatremia in the renal transplant population. MethodsTo define postoperative hyponatremia in renal transplant recipients, a project charter outlined project aims. To measure postoperative hyponatremia, serum sodium at admission and immediately postoperative were recorded by retrospective review of renal transplant recipient charts from June 29, 2010 to December 31, 2011. An Ishikawa diagram was generated to analyze potential causative factors. Interdisciplinary collaboration and hospital policy assessment determined necessary improvements to prevent hyponatremia. Continuous monitoring in control phase was performed by establishing the goal of <10% of transplant recipients with abnormal serum sodium annually through quarterly reduction of hyponatremia by 30% to reach this goal. ResultsOf 54 transplant recipients, postoperative hyponatremia occurred in 92.6% of patients. These potential causes were evaluated: 1) Hemodialysis was more common than peritoneal dialysis. 2) Alemtuzumab induction was more common than antithymocyte globulin. 3) A primary diagnosis of diabetes existed in 16 patients (30%). 4) Strikingly, 51 patients received 0.45% sodium chloride intraoperatively, suggesting this as the most likely cause of postoperative hyponatremia. A hospital policy change to administer 0.9% sodium chloride during renal transplantation resulted in normal serum sodium levels postoperatively in 59 of 64 patients (92.2%). ConclusionThe DMAIC approach and formal quality curriculum for trainees addresses core competencies by providing a framework for problem solving, interdisciplinary collaboration, and process improvement.