Process Map (Current State)

Draw the process as people actually perform it, split the elapsed time into work and waiting, and find the handoffs where it stalls. You finish with a baseline that the rest of the module (and any improvement) can be measured against.

Process mapping and SIPOC are practitioner tools with no canonical original: practice, not research. The one systematic review (healthcare) documents uneven quality in how maps are made, not proof of benefit. Value stream mapping and lean are used widely but supported mostly by case studies: mixed evidence. Timings on this page are rules of thumb.

Use it when:

• You are about to improve, automate or hand over a process and nobody can describe it end to end.
• Work is slow, late or reworked, and each person blames the step before or after theirs.
• You own a small business or a function and want a baseline before you spend money on a fix.

Skip it when:

• You already know the process is limited by one resource: go to 8.2 Capacity & Bottlenecks.
• The problem is a single recurring defect, not the flow: use 8.7 Root Cause & Waste Notes.

Most processes are invisible to the people who run them: each person sees only their own steps, so nobody sees the whole. A map puts the flow, the waiting and the handoffs on one page so the team argues about the same reality. The technique itself, and the SIPOC summary, are practitioner craft with no canonical original. Value stream mapping separates value-adding time from everything else (Rother & Shook, 2003) and is supported mostly by case studies. The lean idea behind it, that waste hides in the flow between activities rather than inside them (Ohno, 1988; Womack & Jones, 1996), has a large but mixed applied literature: results depend on context and execution.

So this page separates work time from wait time, gives handoffs their own table, and asks where work piles up, not who is slow. The limit: a map of the documented process is a picture of the org chart's imagination. Map it as performed, with the people who perform it.

Name one process with a clear start and a clear end. A process that "covers everything" cannot be mapped.

Strong answer: "Supplier invoice approval: starts when an invoice reaches the shared inbox, ends when payment is scheduled. Runs about 120 times a month. Owner: the finance controller."

Illustrative example: the company and all numbers are made up.

A Danish building-supplies wholesaler pays suppliers late and loses early-payment discounts. The finance controller maps supplier invoice approval with two purchasing assistants and an accounts clerk.

Section 2: five steps: register the invoice, match to purchase order, send to budget holder, approve, schedule payment. Work time per invoice is under an hour in total; the wait before matching is two days, because matching is done in a weekly batch.

Section 3: elapsed nine days, work 55 minutes. Roughly one invoice in five is sent back (an estimate from the inbox).

Section 4: the worst handoff is purchasing to budget holder: invoices arrive without the order number, and the budget holder does not know the project.

Section 5: customers include the project manager, whom nobody had mentioned. Improvement to test: match daily instead of weekly for one month and measure elapsed time again.