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Process Management Process Management Edited by Mária Pomffyová Intech IV Published by Intech Intech Olajnica 19/2, 32000 Vukovar, Croatia Abstracting and non-profit use of the material is permitted with credit to the source. Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published articles. Publisher assumes no responsibility liability for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained inside. After this work has been published by the Intech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are an author or editor, and the make other personal use of the work. © 2010 Intech Free online edition of this book you can find under www.sciyo.com Additional copies can be obtained from: [email protected] First published April 2010 Printed in India Technical Editor: Teodora Smiljanic Cover designed by Dino Smrekar Process Management, Edited by Mária Pomffyová p. cm. ISBN 978-953-307-085-8 Preface Process management is presented as knowledge, skills, tools, techniques and systems to define, visualize, measure, control, report and improve processes with the goal to meet people requirements profitably. We can it apply first and foremost by doing business as well as by management processes in many separate areas of our life. To be successful in this process it is needed continually provide the effectiveness of the results of all processes and their constant optimization. It is necessary to monitor the business performance of all pertinent business processes all the time, detect and report weaknesses and problem situations, ideally even suggest optimization option and evaluate the success of improvement measures. Substantive recommendations for actions, including their chances of success, are needed so that the better decisions can be made more quickly. This book reports about the process management research and development findings and results in many various areas. The content of the book has been structured into four technical research sections with total of 18 chapters written by well recognized researchers worldwide. These sections are: 1. process and performance management and their measurement methods, 2. management of manufacturing processes with the aim to be quickly adaptable after real situation demands and their control, 3. quality management information and communication systems, their integration and risk management, 4. management processes of healthcare and water, construction and demolition waste problems and integration of environmental processes into management decisions. The first section is aimed at the historical development of a management process as an integral part of process and organizational management. It helps describe foremost responsibility for all managers, helps drive organizational missions, policies, and objectives. In addition, a management process strengthens organizational capability to overcome current competition and to better prepare for future endeavours in the globalization era as well as in the time of the crisis. The discussion later concentrates on introducing tools, techniques, and practices relating a management process, which is sometimes referred to as VI performance management. In general, performance management consists of three components as a performance measurement, analysis, and improvement where data from an enterprises information system has a fundamental significance. In the past, personal experiences may overshadow the importance of performance information when making decisions or taking actions. In addition, performance measurement has gradually evolved from merely generating accounting-related to more comprehensive information that contains both financial and non-financial information. Finally, the pressure on good governance and accountability has resulted in the increasing use of performance measurement – continuously generating information based on decisions made and actions taken to improve operational and organizational performance. The descriptions and practical applications of process performance measurement presented by an example of process controlling application in manufacturing area are shown in the second chapter. To do process management more effectively it is more important not only putting quality into products at the production stage but also improving communication between management and manufacturing processes. It is the aim of the second section of this book. Because the high quality, low cost and short delivery time are demand from customer, delivery to the multi-item small-sized production, the reduction of delivery time is emphasized. For those needs, developing the methods and designs of control chart suitable for today's work situations become a new problem for manager, which is also research theme of the third chapter. Some comments are drawn, which would become useful references for setting the optimal delivery time. Next fourth chapter could be used to reorganize engineers to improve the overall organizational behaviour in terms of "time of response". This chapter presents a systematic approach to re-organize a complex design process to a more manageable one based on its analogy to dynamic systems, which allows chief engineers improve their management skills and provide systematic alternatives to manage a design process. Modern production should be complex, integrated and constantly adapted to the market requirements by means of the reconfiguration of equipment structure and process changes. The development of such production should be based on evolutionary strategy by successively engaging (eliminating) stand-alone technological systems. The fifth and sixth chapter formulate the purpose of description of the control theory development, with the structural properties of technical systems taken into account, thus creating effective methods to synthesize a supervisor as an instrument to solve the task of consistency and co- ordination control of stand-alone components in a technical system. Thus supervisory (i. e. human) control will always remain necessary until algorithmization of all aspects of technological processes is completed. Such tools help: • to identify the current state of the process in the controlled object, • to understand which information must be gathered additionally for this particular state, • and to generate the correct control incorporating the additional information during assembling procedure. By using of such control system we can better to manage all processes and have an adaptive potential which helps to cut down maintenance costs. The flow technologies as well as process simulation software are new tools which are widely used for process improvement and to define new control strategies (seventh chapter). It helps to establish direct correlations between the line design and its performance. VII Given the comprehensive integration of knowledge management in an organization, the use of information for managerial decisions and actions has become more important. Its impact on management processes is described in the third section of this book. An important part of this form of management is a human factor and ability of a company to utilize possibilities of information technologies the most effectively as well. A problem is a big dependence on employees´ knowledge which must be willing to share it with the others and on their skills and abilities to apply available information technologies and tools supported by them. Eighth chapter describes advantages and disadvantages of a centralized organizational memory system and an informal social network aimed to improve the sharing of tacit knowledge, e.g. expertise and know-how. Management of a system of such networks is very complicated especially when it is a must to consider the balance between costs ratio to solutions effectiveness since this is a very sensitive topic today. The method of process management introduction to the area of company information and communication processes management brings a chance to acquire mathematic apparatus to analyse complicated processes as well as nets – complicated due to the great dependence on human factor share (ninth chapter). The advantages of the models are proposed is that they eliminate as much as possible the influence of human factor. They also allow analysis of its interactivity with other systems and when the map of processes is created negative impacts resulting from superior positions of some employees are not considered. The system also allows management of a system of rapid changes - especially thank to transparency and specification of processes. When suppliers, manufacturers and retailers in the global economy may be working together or in teams effectively, especially when members are in different locations and at different times, they need to communicate and collaborate and access a diverse set of information sources in multiple formats. Thus, supporting work group emphasizes the important aspects of communications, computer technologies and work methodologies. Other reasons for support are cost savings, expedited decision speed, the need to support virtual teams, the need for external experts, and improving the decision making process. To do such processes more effective it is needed to use some computer-based communication and collaboration technologies. In tenth chapter, discussion and topic of virtual work group collaboration are explored within a real and practical case of a selection and implementation of an integrated web-based IT infrastructure for a manufacturing process. In this collaboration processes have a unified communication technologies based on an open system its substantive importance. In the eleventh chapter is introduced and discussed Business Process Management with a focus on the integration of heterogeneous systems across multiple organizations. There are identified the problems and the main challenges not only with regards to technologies but also in the social and cultural context. It is also discussed the issues that have arisen in such ways of co-operating. Preliminary evaluation has shown that an intelligent workflow monitoring system using and past experience can help workflow managers to monitor complex business processes in an active way. What the technology needs to do is allow the users to personalize their workflow and define how they want their tasks to be managed - is a key direction for the development of this area. For a business is the corporate reputation the most important value while is the part of good corporate governance. Crisis that is process is the unexpected situations which affects on corporate reputation. Twelfth chapter is aimed to offer both a logical and proactive VIII process for managing corporate reputation via risk management based perspective. Authors suggest that reputation assets should be managed with risk management based proactive approach since corporate reputation is issue of the risk management to enhance and maintain corporate value. Next area where it is needed to apply management processes is the area of healthcare as well as integration of environmental processes into management decisions. The new research solutions are included in the last section of this book. Water scarcity is a worldwide issue. It is defined as the point at which the aggregate impact of all users impinges on the supply or quality of water under prevailing institutional arrangements to the extent that the demand by all sectors, including the environment, cannot be satisfied fully. The thirteenth chapter’s aim is to provide an overview of how the planning approaches to water management have been implemented in praxis (in Mexico) and to what extent they have resolved critical issues like scarcity. This overview is basically supported on document review that has been published about water management approaches, as well as in official reports that its government has released. Although this chapter addresses the issue of scarcity in terms of planning, it would be worth exploring it since the social scarcity capacities. Their development will also help to face critical problems related to the ecosystem demands in terms of environmental flow and not least important, the variability climate change will pose on water availability. It is needed to note: actions have been taken by local governments to introduce these programs among their water users. In the next fourteenth chapter is developed a hydrological model for planning the water supply from different sources and predicting the chloride concentrations in the aquifer water. The model's advantages lie in its multidisciplinary nature and in its practical applicability, as well as in its ability to evaluate and direct scenarios of supply and treatment of different water sources. At this stage, the model includes only the salinity level component of water quality, but the model can be expanded to examine the treatment of other components, such as nitrogen concentrations, and can be developed as a computerized model that will improve the policy-makers ability to make informed decisions in the process of utilizing of wastewater reuse to reduce the environmental impacts of agriculture. The fifteenth book chapter gives an introduction on process-integration into land-use management decisions, starting with the choice of adequate process-indicators and a condensed overview on process-oriented management support approaches. However, if the evaluation process is managed well under close participation of regional experts and with detailed documentation of the knowledge sources, the evaluation results obtained by specialized software can experience a high regional acceptance. Next chapter is aimed at the construction industry that is a major contributor to excessive natural resource consumption, depletion and degradation, waste generation and accumulation, and environmental impact and degradation. Nowadays, few measures have been carried out to improve the relationship among construction site activities, the environment and the citizens. Maybe due to the mobility of the construction activity, it is difficult to manage the construction companies’ activities due to most construction sites the waste is selected but its destination is not controlled. This chapter presents a strategic actions set necessary to improve and promote the waste construction management in real condition (in Portugal). An effort should be made in order to reduce waste production on site and to increase its recycling value. The reuse, based on deconstruction process, should IX be considered as a good solution that helps reducing the waste environmental effects, such as air, water and ground pollution. It seems to be as an advantageous way to improve waste management, thus following other European countries’ practices. The last two chapters are aimed to achieving of better quality of healthcare. The first one is attended to resource management program and its using for accreditation process at the medical laboratories applied to many aspects of quality management including personnel, basic facilities, equipment, security and safety. There is described a comprehensive program that includes management commitment, effective training, and regular audits of critical functions to identify potential problems, implementation of corrective action and establishment of priorities for improvement benefits the medical laboratory in many ways. The related policies and procedures were developed to provide guidance for workers when implementing the process. Second one – the last chapter illustrates a sustained conceptual service quality improvement process for management of software development within a healthcare enterprise. The more organized the system modules in a healthcare enterprise are, the higher is the resulting quality of care. The healthcare quality management centre and system analysts can utilize the statistical survey results to promote and constitute the service quality. Here proposed process provides a high-assurance service-oriented requirement mechanism that can engage the information technology department to obtain sufficient and essential demands from all users. The process can compass, improve the software service quality of software development and maintenance, including sophisticated patient care and security, in a healthcare enterprise environment. Editor Mária Pomffyová Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica The Faculty of Economics Institute of Managerial Systems Affiliate Branch of the Faculty in Poprad Slovakia