April 13, 2011 | 0 Comments

All you’ve ever wanted to know about frameworks…APQC Study sneak preview

Why this study?

APQC knew that their Process Classification Framework (PCF) is widely used in business, fairly evident from 100,000 downloads from their website over twenty years. They were also aware that it has been translated into Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, Polish and Portuguese. What they didn’t know, however, were the individual uses of the PCF or other frameworks within organizations. It was a good time to find out. Thus was launched the broad and ambitious look at “Using Process Frameworks and References Models to Get Real Work Done.” After participating as a Research Champion for over four months, I’m convinced this could become ‘the study that launched a thousand studies.’ I profile just two of the companies that participated, below.

UPS

UPS had the floor for an entire day and presented to the Study group of around 75 sponsor companies. It was a great story around the marriage of program and process management, process simplicity through a mapping/costing tool, and connecting executive initiatives and workplace activities through a custom process framework. It was a very mature approach to BPM and generated a great deal of buzz. It was obvious that the UPS focus on logistics has the company taking a new look at how business process is managed.

ThyssenKrupp

A second great story came from ThyssenKrupp Steel, the world’s second-largest steel producer and the largest capital investment ($9B) in the US in recent times. As a greenfield project, they were able to make the APQC PCF the baseline for all
business process and to specify and manage workplace activity and compliance through a single interface. It was a story in simplicity and automation that was unique among the companies that participated. ThyssenKrupp is poised to be the leading provider of rolled steel to the automotive and other industries in the US soon after firing up their rolling mill. Across the Study site visits, this was the most interesting case of an end-to-end solution empowering every aspect of process for a major enterprise.

The Findings

This Study was a great look into how some of the World’s great corporations are thinking about business process management. Go to here to download a free, advance copy of the report.