Using a Process Framework at Process Design

Process Design using Process Frameworks

Designing and modeling processes often starts with many questions to solve:

What are the processes, activities and tasks?
How to structure, to distribute these on how many levels?
Which unique id or number to attach to each process component?
And so on...

But, why re-inventing the wheel? Look first at APQC.

APQC helps organizations work smarter, faster, and with greater confidence. It is the world’s foremost authority in benchmarking, best practices, process and performance improvement, and knowledge management.

APQC says: "Starting with a process framework or reference model accelerates these activities by giving professionals a basis on which to build. There are several process frameworks available to choose from, including APQC's free Process Classification Framework^SM."

APQC's Process Classification Framework^® (PCF) is a taxonomy of business processes that allows organizations to objectively track and compare their performance internally and externally with organizations from any industry. It also forms the basis for a variety of projects related to business processes. It is designed as a framework and global standard to be customized for use in any organization.

APQC has defined Industry Specific Process Classification Framework (PCF) for Aerospace and Defense, Airline, Automotive, Banking, Broadcasting, City Government, Consumer Electronics, Consumer Products, Downstream Petroleum, Education, Healthcare, Life Sciences, Property and Casualty Insurance, Retail, Telecommunications, Upstream Petroleum, Utilities

Are you in the same industry? Compare the process framework with your business processes to see whether your business is in line with the leading companies.

APQC has also defined a "Cross Industry" Process Classification Framework (PCF), see picture.

A PCF contains a list of processes that you can use to define the work processes of your company.

You also can use it for managing content, benchmarking, structuring and improving processes, and so on.

Shown in this picture is the top-level of the mentioned processes, called Category.

The Process Classification Framework (PCF) contains 5 levels:

1. Category
2. Process group
3. Process
4. Activity
5. Task

Each process component has a unique PCF-ID and Hierarchical-ID. Based on these ID's you can analyze, compare, benchmark your business processes with other organizations.

Two examples from the Cross Industry PCF:

Source: APQC.

Advice on using a Process Classification Framework:

Select the PCF relevant for your organization, or use the cross-industry-PCF.
Select from relevant PCF all processes that are running in your organization.
Select from the lower levels only the relevant activities and tasks that are performed in your organization.
Use the same process/activity/task names (or something similar) and the same ID's.

Finally: Don't re-invent the wheel. Use the information at APQC and your processes will be aligned with other leading companies in the world. APQC offers more information for your "process management" questions.

June 2021 - Wim van Bakel - VBProcesConsultancy

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