The Ben Graham Corporation 

Building better business processes since 1953.

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The Basics of Process Charting
Before we begin a process charting effort it is important to determine the purpose of our charts.  If our objective is to plan without getting into detail we can use various methods of block diagramming.  These techniques (referred to from time to time as diagramming, or charting, or mapping) use various shapes to record a general description of the logic that accompanies a work process.

Need for Detail, Rigorously Organized
However, when we want to turn our plans into action we need rigorously organized detail.  It is one thing to dream about a new building.  It is quite another to build it and before we order materials and pour concrete we help ourselves immensely by preparing engineering drawings.  The same is true with manufacturing.  For thousands of years manufacturing was accomplished by scraping, pounding and fitting but modern manufacturing gets enormous advantage by carefully drawing every part and every sub-assembly of the product first.  Similarly, information processes are notorious for misunderstanding, counterproductive effort and muddling through.  The time has arrived for rigorous detailed organization of business processes. 

 This is best done at the operating level by people who are knowledgeable about the details of the work.  When managers attempt to redesign work processes they are limited to superficial information.  If they seek help from outside consultants they simply move farther away from the detailed reality of the work.  It is no wonder that they find themselves using charting techniques that are built of generalities.  This is what they have at their disposal.  But, it is not sufficient for workflow improvement and it certainly does not deserve a title that includes the word engineering.  (Much of what has masqueraded under the misnomer of reengineering in recent years is little more than reguessing being done by the same managers and consultants who have done it many times before.) 

 This phrase speaks an eternal truth.  In recent years increasing numbers of leaders have come to understand and accept this truth.  And, they have found that when they seek to utilize the experience of their people (their most valuable resource) they find their people responding with ingenuity and integrity. 

A Comparison of Charting levels
The figures following, (Figure 1 and Figure 2) compare a block diagram composed of boxes containing general descriptions connected by arrows with a detailed Graham Process Chart (greatly reduced to fit on this page.  To be readable it would have to be at least two or three times the size and to be used by a team it ought to be about five feet long.).  Both charts display a receiving process.  Obviously the Graham Process Chart is much more detailed than the block diagram.

Block Diagram Chart

FIGURE 1

Graham Process Chart, Greatly Reduced

FIGURE 2

 The simpler chart can appeal to people who do not want to take the time to get into the detail.  But, the detail does not go away because we ignore it.  If we intend to engineer our process we definitely need the detail.  Here are some of the advantages that detailed process charts provide for us.

The Chart Items
With Graham Charts each item that plays a part in the process appears as a label followed by its own line along which appear the steps of its processing.  This avoids a great deal of confusion and protects us against loose ends that have not been thought through.  Block diagrams simply do not follow the flow of individual items.  (Items include records, reports, data bases, products, materials, etc.  Essentially they are the subject matter of a process.)

Left to Right, Straight Line, Horizontal
In the early years of preparing Graham type charts they were allowed to wander in any direction.  A breakthroughs that led to our current ability to chart large, complex processes was keeping the lines straight from left to right.  Charts that wander make sequence hard to follow.

Also, the fact that they are kept horizontal makes for ease of displaying them regardless of their size.  It is much easier to read a chart that is three or four feet in length if it is horizontal than if it is vertical.  If the chart gets larger yet, and many process charts run ten or twelve feet in length, it is still easy to put them at eye level if they are horizontal.  If they are vertical, displaying them in one piece becomes useless.  Cutting them and footnoting from one to the next destroys the picture.

Chart Shows Actual and Not Theoretical
What is recorded is what actually happens, not what theoretically should happen.  The data is assembled empirically and the fact that each item has its own line assures that the process will be thought through.  An open end of a line begs the question, what happens next.

Non-Value Added Work is Apparent
Unfortunately, when people think through a work process without dealing with individual items they tend to focus on what seem to be the major actions.  These are invariably the value-added steps, the things that move the process along to completion.  Meanwhile, real world processes usually have eight or ten non-value-added steps for every one that adds value.  Block diagrams typically miss almost all of these.

People working with charts that only display value-added steps can get pretty self righteous about their value focus.  However, we do a much better job of actually eliminating or improving the non-value-added steps when we address them.  For example, an actual case involved a process that included ten minutes of value-added work that took nine days to process.  After automating the ten minutes of work it still took nine days to process it.  Later a proper process study of the same flow eliminated almost ninety percent of the processing time.

Consistent knowledge of Location
The arrow symbol appears every time there is a change of location and with it are words that tell where the item has gone.  Therefore it is very simple for a person to determine location for every item throughout all of the steps of a workflow.  All that is needed is to trace backwards from the step in question to the last arrow.  Since that item hasn’t moved since then it is still where it landed at that time.  These arrows also make obvious, opportunities for streamlining the process by reducing backtracking.

Document Redundancy is Obvious
Where you display the items, their redundancy becomes obvious.  This leads to reduction of the number of records required to complete a transaction.  Specific studies have reduced from as many as seventy-seven records to four, from forty-two to one and often in the range of from seven to one. 

This keeps the focus on reducing work, not reducing staff.  It is far healthier to reduce the work and keep the staff than vice versa.  By keeping the staff the organization is able to grow, has capacity for further improvement and develops proud enthusiastic employees.  How much better that is than drawing a simplistic chart, assuming that the work can be done with reduced staff and winding up with a process no better than, often worse than the one that was never really studied, with staff short-handed and alienated and the most experienced employees gone.

Process Quality
A great deal of quality stems from proper attention to detail.  Not only is this shown on the Graham style charts, there is also a symbol, the square representing inspection, that calls attention to each time an item is checked to see if it is right.  Careful study of process charts sometimes reveals places where inspections are not conducted that are costly omissions.  Meanwhile, they also reveal, sometimes in the same chart, inspections that are completely redundant and unnecessary.

Records Storage and Disposal
Because each item in the process has its own line, the final disposition of each item becomes apparent.  This is a major advantage when it comes to making decisions as to which records must be retained and which can be disposed of.  Each item line that displays a record ends with symbols and verbiage that identify disposition.

Detailed charts Provide a Vehicle for Harnessing Detailed Experience
When detailed charts are addressed by people who collectively possess many years of firsthand experience, they have no difficulty recognizing how their portions fit into the bigger picture.  Since, collectively, these people have experience covering the entire chart, they have the appropriate knowledge to make informed decisions about it.  This is worlds better than having people who never did the work imposing decisions based on superficial information.

Also, we find a by-product of improved cooperation from this effort.  As the team of people, from different areas, work together they gain improved understandings of one another’s work.  This tends to overcome interdepartmental disagreements and establish a forum for creating organizational rather than departmental solutions.

People Whose Experience Equips them for Work Improvement
The people who are most ideally suited to improve work processes are the people who do the work.  In addition there are people in various staff positions whose assignments put them “in the trenches” with the operating people and are therefore in a good position to support these efforts.  Some of those staff  people are:

• People in Forms Management - because they must work at the level of data entries, they have traditionally been more aware of the details of operations than most staff people.  Today they are in a superb position to support electronic forms initiatives.

• People in Records Management - because the detailed work required to build and maintain effective classification systems for records requires that they become highly familiar with their organization’s information..

• Industrial Engineers - because their skills can supply the graphics and the cost and benefit measurements needed by the teams. 

• Auditors and Inspectors - can be very knowledgeable about details of operations and can assist improvement activities effectively if they are able to maintain a focus of support rather than surveillance in their work.

How to prepare Charts using Graham Charting Software
Charts are drawn using a mouse to place symbols on a charting screen.  The software draws horizontal lines between symbols automatically.  These lines are interconnected by using multiple mouse licks.  Then, text is keyed in, attached to the labels and the symbols.

Symbols
The symbols have been proving themselves in world-wide use throughout most of this century. They provide a powerful set of categories for gathering information on a process by assuring that the data is collected at an appropriate, elemental level.  Then after the documentation is completed they provide powerful realism for the team as they analyze the process.  (See figure 3)

                                                          “Do”    Origin   Add to   Handle  Move    Check    Store    Destroy

FIGURE 3

Conventions
Since most processes involve the flow of more than one entity we use standard ways for displaying how the flows are interrelated.  Figure 4 is a portion of a Graham Process chart that displays the conventional ways that we draw the lines to connect the symbols.  Brackets show separation and assembly of items.  Branching lines show different flows that follow decisions.   Vees and inverted vees show where information in one item is used to do something to another item.

Graham Chart, Displaying Conventions