The BMS 2000 has proven to be an extremely effective tool for companies to use to improve their business operations.  It serves as the baseline for mapping business processes and through this mapping enables improvement of the processes.  Companies have found a remarkable ability to understand how their own company operates and take steps to improve the overall operation.  They have discovered that growth or changes to the company can be achieved without turmoil and that operational efficiencies are achievable.  The process orientation of the BMS 2000 enables a company to improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of their operations.  Process mapping allows the company to design their processes with the appropriate overlaps without introducing inefficient redundancies.

So what is the BMS 2000?  The essence of the BMS 2000 is its process organizational structure.  Unlike other business models, the BMS 2000 considers department lines to be transparent.  The way companies actually carry out their day to day operations is through a series of activities/processes.  These processes must have an owner and they must collect an input and hand off an output.  The input can be something tangible, such as a piece of sheet metal or it can be some information or data.  With the typical contract manufacturer, there are roughly 27 processes needed to fulfill the company's mission.  Of these 27 processes, only seven interact with tangible material.  The remaining 20 processes are limited to information/data management.  For instance, the Order Entry process collects customer requirements and converts it to a Sales Order.  The Sales Order is then used by the Production Planning process to convert the Sales Order into a Production Plan.

When a company defines and documents how they carry out all of their business processes they begin to realize just how all of the processes interact and how to eliminate redundancies and improve system effectiveness.  They additionally begin to realize just how important a process orientation is to the company.  Although they still may be organized around a department structure, the process management structure begins to drive the company.  The department boundaries are blurred by the overlapping process activities and few if any things get dropped in the organizational cracks.  Because each of the processes has a clearly documented input and output, it becomes very apparent when a process is not being carried out as documented.  It the process waiting for the output from another process doesn't raise the flag, the internal audit process will.

This closed loop process management system alerts management when a process is not being carried out as intended.  Management can now take action to correct the failure before it becomes critical and severely impacts the bottom line. 

Besides documenting all of the company's business processes, the BMS 2000 establishes an organizational model for collecting and reporting the results of each process.  A Work Center is constructed for each of the company's processes and is used to distribute any needed input information and organize the process output information.  The data integrity is controlled by establishing appropriate folder and file permissions.  One person (the Process Owner) is assigned the responsibility to manage the information within the Work Center and given the ability to assign access permissions at any level necessary to maintain the data integrity. The Process Owner delegates the responsibility for maintaining the information on a folder by folder basis and allows an open access to all information when necessary.

Each identified process has a Work Center designed to collect information needed to carry out the process.  It also provides an organized location to maintain all information generated by the process.

In the Purchase Material and Services Work Center the Forms folder contains templates for Purchase Orders, Purchase Requisitions, and Fax Cover Sheets.  Additionally it could contain the P/O Log template if the company chooses to log their P/O's.  When P/O's are approved and emailed to the supplier, they are placed in the Purchase Orders folder to await the material receipt.

The Work Centers are organized by functional area.  They are positioned in the Info Center tree to show the relationship to all of the business processes.  The processes are structured as Core and Support processes.  The Info Center Business Model shows the relationship of all of the processes.  From the Info Center all company information can be accessed.

When a process involves a computer application such as Access, Quickbooks, or an ERP system, a shortcut/hyperlink can be established to link to the specified application.

Controlled documents are maintained in the Document Control Work Center.  Access to these documents is given through hyperlinks to the released version of the document.  When the document version is updated, it is automatically available at the point of use (at the designated Work Center).  All documents are controlled through the Document Control Work Center, but not all documents are managed by Document Control.  This document management approach, known as centralized document control with decentralized application, is very effective at managing all forms of documents in the company.  This allows the group or area most interested in the use of the documents to control how the documents are managed.

Records, being another form of documents, are managed/controlled by the process owner within the designated Work Center.  Record integrity is maintained through assignment of directory and file permissions.  The Work Center owner is given the authority to manage their records by allowing editing or updating access to a responsible authority.  Record naming is structured to enable the users to access and read the information without restrictions.  When needed the records can be set for limited access.

Process Management

With the ownership of the processes being assigned to specific managers and supervisiors, it is not uncommon to find that one manager/supervisor has 4 to 6 processes assigned to them.  This means that they now have 4 to 6 process Work Centers and associated InBoxes to manage.  Because the Info Center is constructed to integrate the people with the business processes, the Work Centers must be tied to the process owner.  To accomplish this link, the system is designed to transfer InBox data from the Work Center to the process owner’s Personal InBox.  This is done through a customized application that moves any file or folder from the Work Center to the process owner’s Personal InBox and sends an email notice to the process owner. 

Document Linkage

All documents in the system are linked from the top level business model to all procedures, work instructions, and forms.  Procedures are tied directly to the business model, Work instructions are tied to procedures or other work instructions, and forms are tied to either a procedure or work instruction.  From the top to the bottom there is never a broken link.

A typical
Work Center: