SOA and Lean Process Improvement

In March 2007 there was an interesting article titled SOA and BPM seen creating a Lean/Six Sigma machine.

It touched upon some of the obvious advantages of System Oriented Architectures(SOA) and using them in combination with Business Process Management (BPM) tools to orchestrate the whole process. This article talked about how IT was hitherto unengaged in the actual making of the flow happen and now with the combination of BPM and SOA, this is now possible.

The article hints at, but does not fully explore the true Lean Improvement potential of the combination.

The real benefits of the combination of SOA and BPM can be even more when you combine it with the single version of data that many corporations are striving for in real life. Customer information is reduntantly stored in multiple systems - the Order Processing, the Manufacturing, the Financial,and the Warehousing systems, for example.

If a corporation had bought all of these systems from the same software vendor there is a good chance that some level of integration and elimination of duplication of information is already present.

In most cases, reality is a whole lot uglier than this - The Order Management system may be from one vendor but the Manufacturing and Financial systems may be from another.

Guess what, some of them may not talk to each other while some of them do. So duplication of data with multiple places where intersections of data are entered and maintained independent of each other is still common.

Above and beyond just orchestrating processes, a SOA provides a golden opportunity to create objects such as Order, Customer and make them available as single versions of truth across functions. This enables the company to eliminate duplicate points of entry of the same data over and over again.

Sometimes SOA facilitates elimination of redundant entry of data across organizations that could even be external to the company. A purchase order from one company transmitted electronically to the vendor which updates the Order management system automatically just eliminated redundant key entry on the other side.

SOA and BPM not only just orchestrate and implement Lean Improvement effectively, but if used creatively can go beyond the obvious advantages.

Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things. - Jesse Jackson