SIPOC Map

When your working model proves ready, it s time to map the processes involved in making and delivering it—a formidable task for which you can use the SIPOC Map and Process MapA/alue Stream Map techniques. 

Use a SIPOC Map when you need a shared understanding of how you plan to produce and deliver your innovation to customers. This is your first order of dehnition, to be followed by more detail using a Process Map or Value Stream Map (see Technique 46). 

It s extremely important to keep the development of the SIPOC Map high-level. If team members want to talk in depth about a particular step, the facilitator should focus on the big picture instead. 

Sometimes, it can be helpful to do a fun or simple SIPOC example first (such as ordering and delivering a pizza) to warm the team up and demonstrate the level of discussion required to complete the SIPOC Map. 

As you build your SIPOC Map, you can use the "cheat sheet" shown in Exhibit 45.1 to guide your answers. 

While the pharmaeeutical team identified one eustomer per output, there ean he multiple eustomers and outputs in a SIPOC Map. For example, when a pizza is delivered the customer gets both the product and the bill—two different outputs for the same customer. But sometimes different outputs go to different customers. A car dealer repairs your car, which is under warranty. The repaired car goes back to you, the customer, and the invoice goes to the car manufacturer, which is also a customer. 

Inputs may take on different roles in the process. Some act as key ingredients and are consumed in the transformation in the drug-development process, chemical compounds are such ingredients. Other inputs are used to enable the operation of the process in our example, we might designate physicians andpolicies as such inputs, but we didn t list them on our example SIPOC Map (Exhibit 45.2). 

Exhibit 45.2 shows a completed SIPOC Map for the new drug development process. 

If you ve already developed a SIPOC Map (Technique 45), this will give you the starting and ending points for your process— and the main steps in between. You can always go back and add or subtract scope to your Process Map after you determine more about what will be involved in bringing your innovation to market. 

Create a SIPOC and/or Process Map (see Techniques 45 and 46) to document the current solution s inputs, outputs, customers, and suppliers, and any associated processes. Use this information to make a list of the process steps, systems, subsystems, or components that are linked to the focus topic. For example, part of the process of using a credit card is carrying a physical card, which can be lost or stolen and subsequently used by identity thieves. 

If the SIPOC process map, as described in the earlier section is available, it is important to embed all communication partners in the overall process. Four connection points (interfaces) exist in this simple process image (Table 8.2). 

SIPOC It is a high level map of a process to view how a company goes about satisfying a particular customer requirement in the overall supply chain. SIPOC stands for suppher, input, process, output and customer. 

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