iGrafx BPR Keeps Data Flowing at Sloan Valve

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By Lou DiToro

Outpacing the competition is getting hard. Being the marketplace leader today does not mean a company will be the marketplace leader tomorrow. Incumbency does not help a business deal with ever-advancing technologies, regulatory turmoil, shifting customer demands and the loss of high quality talent. Without the ability to meet these challenges, even perennially successful companies stumble.

Sloan Valve (SV), a family-run, privately held company, has invested wisely in its enterprise during its hundred-year history. Founded in 1906 by William Elvis Sloan, inventor of the Flushometer, SV is a world-class manufacturer of specialized plumbing supplies – faucets, flushing systems, waterless technologies, dryers, sinks, shower heads and water control systems. A market leader, SV maintains its competitive preeminence by constant tending.

For Sloan, that means not staying ahead of the competition, but shaping the marketplace. It is not afraid to take bold steps or try new tings instead of reacting to what others do. SV forces others to react to what it does. Known for its progressiveness, Sloan recently embarked on a comprehensive initiative – with help from iGrafx's BPM solution – designed to identify and reinvent core practices and processes. SV's goal: transform itself from a silo-oriented organization to a sleek process-driven enterprise.

Maintaining Preeminence

Sloan maintains market leadership by readily adopting new technologies and new ways of doing things before its competition does. It goes to great lengths to improve both its products and its operations. Its foundry and manufacturing facilities are among the most modern and efficient in the industry, while its distributor network, with more than 3,500 members, is one of the largest in the industry. Its success is largely attributable to its management team, which has been among the most forward-thinking units in the industry.

To maintain its leader status, SV’s management team decided to re-engineer business processes to maintain marketplace leadership. In 2004 it formed a cross-functional process council to spearhead operational transformation. Composed of key members of its senior staff, the council pinpointed the core and strategic processes that had to be completely redesigned. This exercise provided SV's implementation team with the strategic direction it needed to start the transformation efforts. SV's ultimate goal is to link each of its redesigned processes to its SAP solution and then integrate strategic goals into a balanced scorecard and swimlane principles and practices.

Figure 1: Business Process Life Cycle

The Big Bang Approach

SV's approach to process change is clear. Unlike some companies that strive for small process improvements, Sloan Valve believes making incremental changes results in only incremental results. Instead of relying on specific continuous improvement techniques to modify processes and relieve bottlenecks, it develops breakthrough business processes that bring huge results. It then deploys them throughout the enterprise.

"Our approach to process change is different," says Tom Coleman, Sloan Valve's chief process officer, who spearheads process improvement at the company. "Continuous improvement projects optimize processes to fit specific situations. They drive the incremental improvements processes need as markets change. That's all well and good. But eventually, processes need to be completely redesigned, if you want to achieve the kind of dramatic results needed to outpace the competition. That's what we're doing here."

Implementing this "big bang" approach meant the Franklin, Ill.-based manufacturer had to shed its silo-oriented mentality and adopt the core principles of business process management. This meant developing a series of imperatives to start the company on its process journey.

As part of this effort, Sloan had to find a business process management solution that would enable it to model newly created processes quickly and efficiently. Sloan Valve tabbed iGrafx's BPM software solution because of its modeling capabilities. The iGrafx solution offered features in terms of process modeling that Microsoft Visio, Sloan's incumbent modeling tool, did not offer – and it was easy to use.

The iGrafx BPM solution is an alternative to traditional business process management suites. An integrated suite of process applications, iGrafx's BPM solution enables organizations to document, analyze, optimize and manage processes. It features high level business process analysis and modeling tools, but unlike some BPM solutions, does not lock a company into a specific execution environment. Instead, it lets a business integrate with a wide variety of standard execution engines.

The Methodology of Process Change

Process change at Sloan Valve is based on a proprietary methodology developed by the company. Five keys drive this methodology – the process must:

1. Have an end-to-end focus,
2. Use the as-is process to understand not improve the process,
3. Focus on developing a completely new (to be) design,
4. Use top-down decomposition and
5. Be strategic in nature.

SV's proprietary methodology is based on the thinking of many of today's BPM thought leaders, like Michael Hammer and Roger Burlton. It includes six key stages: mobilization, diagnosis, design, development, implementation and post-implementation. Its goal is to completely replace the as-is process with a to-be design with help from a customer-focused team in an atmosphere where the customer is boss. A second key goal is generating a high return on investment (ROI) as a result.

Figure 2: Sloan Valve's Business Process Management System

The Logistics of Process Change

The logistics of process change at SV is comprehensive and straightforward. Basically, it involves the company defining its as-is process and then developing its to-be process using iGrafx's modeling capabilities. Since SV’s standards state that everything in the to-be process must fit on a single page, SV employs a technique called "process decomposition" to decompose processes into sub-processes and fully understand each one.

Five cross-functional teams, each consisting of about seven members, are working to identify as-is processes, develop to-be processes and then move new processes to implementation. The teams use iGrafx solutions to model workflows in real time and then print them on large engineering printers. All models and supporting documents are also stored and managed in the iGrafx Process Central repository.

Process Central promotes centralized management and distribution of process knowledge, including process maps, analysis reports, work rules, spreadsheets and documents. More than a document management tool, it offers process documentation, versioning control and remote access. It also offers controls at numerous process levels, enables rollback and facilitates document access and approval using desktop applications, thick clients and the Web. Process Central supports both LDAP and Enterprise Directory.

"We use this technique to segregate and visually understand information," says Coleman. "iGrafx does a good job of this, where our previous tool, Microsoft Visio, did not." A single process may have seven or eight boxes on the first page, each of which can be clicked on to drill down multiple layers. From a management perspective, sub-process files are easy to manage and deploy in process central, along with every file’s business logic. 

Convincing Senior Management

By developing its process models using iGrafx's FlowCharter, the company's modeling module, the change activity becomes "much more than a back office job done by someone in IT," says Tom Hillison, manager of business process management at Sloan Valve. Using the tool on a screen, Hillison and Coleman demonstrate to senior management how terrible the as-is process is.

"This technique typically shocks senior management in terms of how the company actually runs," says Coleman. From there, buy-in at all levels is achieved and permission is granted to develop to-be processes using controlled decomposition techniques and carefully diagram processes into details.

"When we put those big diagrams up on the wall, it’s really the first glimpse most people have of a process in action," says Hillison. "The iGrafx diagrams become a central rallying point that focuses us on customer results rather than functional departments." Previously, people could not visualize, let alone understand relationships between steps, activities and outcomes.

Sloan Valve is using iGrafx software to diagram five core processes:

1. New product development and implementation,
2. Customer support,
3. Order to cash,
4. Order acquisition and
5. Customer communication.

Each of these core processes impacts the company’s value proposition – the sum of which compels people to buy Sloan Valve products. It is imperative that it gets them right.

Additionally, Sloan Valve has modeled three governance processes: strategic planning (which drives all other processes), employee performance management and business planning. The company has also modeled a variety of enabling processes such as strategic alliances, engineering change management, master data management and factory operations change management.   

The Savings Line Up

Direct results of using iGrafx solutions are apparent. In the area of engineering change management, for example, a cross-functional team now manages a previously paper-laden process that has become completely paperless within the SAP system. This process, which once took four days to execute, now takes about one hour.

In addition, in vendor and supply management, the process of initiating and supporting special orders in SAP was reduced from three and half days to one hour. The redesign consolidated the activities of about a dozen people into one person with a backup. Despite the reduction in staff, special orders can still accommodate new part requests in about 15 minutes. SV is also reinventing its new product development process, and expects to reduce its time-to-market cycle by approximately 75 percent.

For Sloan Valve, the payback from iGrafx software comes from its ease of use and cost effectiveness, as well as from the ability to centrally manage files, simplify views according to need and decompose processes by drilling down into detail. From a management perspective, iGrafx software enables the team to manage files in its central repository and display them in understandable ways at all levels of the enterprise.

Conclusion

Business process redesign is turning Sloan Valve into a process-driven enterprise. The company is well on its way to implementing an enterprise-wide operational transformation program that provides tangible benefits and a high return on investment. Efforts like these will enable Sloan Valve to outpace the competition and remain a market leader for years to come.

About the Author:

Lou DiToro is a freelance writer who specializes in writing about business processes and competitive strategy. He welcomes feedback on his articles for BPMEnterprise.com. Contact Lou DiToro at louditoro (at) hotmail.com.

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