Measurement Process and the Improvement Process

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Let's take a closer look.

1. Organization selected for the project is a Pharmaceuticals company. I am having a difficult time in finding information for section 6 (Measurement process) and 7 (Improvement process). If you could give me some ideas and push me into the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.

One approach to helping with a question like this one is through illustrative example. This is the approach this response takes. I located an excellent illustrative example, which I attached of the management project for a German pharmaceutical company (How the Art...doc), from which this response (in part) is drawn. The second article (Pharmaceutical Process Control.doc) explains the need for specific quality controls in the pharmaceutical company, which you can draw on for your project as well.

Let's take a closer look at #6 and #7.

6. Measurement process

In general, the 11-step measurement process consists of:

1. Identify the process flow. This is the first and perhaps most important step. If your employees cannot agree on their process(es), how can they effectively measure them or utilize the output of what they have measured?

Output: A list of processes, key processes, and flow diagrams for these key processes.

2. Identify the critical activity to be measured. The critical activity is that culminating activity where it makes the most sense to locate a sensor and define an individual performance measure within a process.

Output: A list of the critical activity areas for the key processes.

3. Establish performance goal(s) or standards. All performance measures should be tied to a predefined goal or standard, even if the goal is at first somewhat subjective. Having goals and standards is the only way to meaningfully interpret the results of your measurements and gauge the success of your management systems.

Output: A list of goals for each critical activity within the process.

4. Establish performance measurement(s). In this step, you continue to build the performance measurement system by identifying individual measures.

Output: The performance measure and its components.

5. Identify responsible party(s). A specific entity (as in a team or an individual) needs to be assigned the responsibilities for each of the steps in the performance measurement process.

Output: A list of people and their areas of responsibility.

6. Collect data. In addition to ...