Process Improvement Plan Assignment
Process Improvement Plan:
For this, your penultimate assignment for this class, you’ll be putting together a process improvement plan. There’s nothing tricky about this assignment; it is nothing more or less than what its name suggests. You’ll just pick a process at use in an organization with which you’re familiar and explain how it can be improved.
There’s a document in Files with the subtitle ‘process improvement plan’ that I recommend you download and read through, since many parts of this assignment were taken from this template. Although a formal process improvement plan includes an assessment of the change after it’s been implemented, we’re going to forgo that step here. Instead, we’re going to focus on writing a rationale for the plan, developing and implementing the plan, and evaluating the plan.
The paper will be broken into five parts/sections. What follows here are the assignment guidelines, and the point value of each section:
General Guidelines:
- Label each area using the five headings included in the grading rubric.
- Use organizational charts, tables, and bulleted lists where appropriate (make sure that you label these items)
- Check for spelling and grammar errors. Two points will be taken off for each error.
- Use MS Word or save your document as a rich text file, so that formatting is retained.
- Include page numbers (this part of the project will generally be between 5-7 pages in length)
- Include a title page
- Upload your completed project into the appropriate area in Week 13.
Section 1: Introduction
Give us a brief overview of the organization that you are profiling, and explain the process that you intend to improve.
Section 2: Rationale for Change
This section is comprised of two parts, labeled below as ‘a’ and ‘b’.
a) Explain how the process you are analyzing satisfies the following criteria:
- The process can be defined. That is, we can explain in ‘plain English’ what the process is. Walk the reader through each step of the process as it’s currently conducted.
- The process occurs frequently within the organization.
- The problems with the current process are fairly well-known and obvious (HINT: It will likely be helpful here to provide examples of instances where the current process has broken down or where its inefficiency has been exposed).
- Stakeholders will appreciate improvements to this process.
- We can make the needed changes to this process with little or no outside help.
b) Additionally, provide a flowchart of the current process. Be sure to include all steps.
Section 3: Process Design and Implementation
This section is comprised of three parts, labeled ‘a’ , ‘b’ and ‘c’ below.
a) Answer the following questions. Be sure your answers are complete.
- What steps in the process will be changed?
- What are the risks associated with this change?
- What are the costs?
- What workers will be affected by this change? Discuss both those workers who will be directly affected, and those that will be indirectly affected.
- Who will be responsible for implementing/managing the process change?
- What needs to be done in order to implement the change?
- At some point we’re going to need to analyze data to determine if the change has been a net benefit for the organization. What data will we collect? How will we collect it? What are some of the other possible sources of data that we might consider looking at.
- How likely is it that this change will be a success?
- What is the possible downside to this change?
b) Design a contingency plan. As with all process changes, it’s possible that things may not go as smoothly as we might hope. Detail those steps in the new process where it’s most likely that things ‘could go wrong’, and offer some suggestions for fixing those problems if they should arise.
c) Additionally, provide a flowchart of the new process. Be sure to include all steps.
Section 4: Evaluation
Discuss how we will evaluate this change after we’ve made it. Discuss the actual metrics we will use to determine if the process was a success. In other words, talk about what we will need to see in the data to determine if this change was a success. The success of the change isn’t something we should guess at; it’s something we should be able to measure.
Section 5: Consistency with a TQ approach to improving processes
Discuss how this process change was/is consistent with a total quality approach to process improvement. Be sure to cite the textbook (or other outside source) in this section at least twice.
Grading Rubric: Process Improvement Plan
| Area | Possible Points | Points Given |
| Introduction-Name and brief description of organization and discussion of the change you will be implementing. | 10 | |
| Rationale for Change- See requirements for this section in the assignment description. | 20 | |
| Process Design and Implementation: See requirements for this section in the assignment description. | 40 | |
| Evaluation- See requirements for this section in the assignment description. | 10 | |
| Consistency with TQ- See requirements for this section in the assignment description. | 20 | |
| Subtotal | 100 | |
| Spelling, grammar, and structure (-2 points for each error) | ||
| Total | 100 |
