What is SIPOC?

Hi folks, this post is going to be more technical, rather than a personal experience. When the team was in the stage of making the AS-IS report (this report primarily tries to give an overview of the current business flow of the organization), we came across something called SIPOC. I found this tool pretty interesting and worth sharing here. This post will primarily talk about SIPOC and my learning.

This tool is used in process management and improvement activity. SIPOC gives a high level understanding of the process. It gives an overview of what is the process all about along with information on who all are the participants in this process and what are their inputs. It primarily gives a structured understanding of the process before the process owners make the process maps.

SIPOC stands for
S: Supplier
I: Input
P: Process
O: Output
C: Customer

Now let us try to understand all these individual alphabets with some relevant examples.
Supplier (S): These are the people who supply the inputs. It is mandatory that every supplier will provide some input to the process. It is not possible that there will be a supplier who is not supplying any input to the process. In many cases, the supplier and the Customer may be the same. These are primarily end-to-end processes.

Input (I): These are the things that will start or rather trigger the process..

Process (P): Generally the process is defined as a combination of verb + noun form.

Output (O): These are the things that the process produces. These are generally tangible.

Customer (C): These are the people who will receive the output. Just like every supplier should at least have one input, in the same way every output should have a customer.

We will take the example of a basic tendering procedure for purchase of some material for the Civil dept., by the Materials dept. in a manufacturing organization:

Supplier: Indenting department – the one who wants to purchase some material.
Approved Vendors – the one who will quote for the tender

Input: Purchase Request along with the specifications to the Materials department
Quotations from the vendors

Process: Tendering Process (As I had said before, the name of the process should be a combination of Verb+ noun form)

Output: Approved Tender

Customer: Indenting department.

From my experience on SIPOC, I have found that it helps a lot if we add any boundaries that are there to the process. For example, maybe the tender can be floated to only approved parties and not all the vendors. So, it is advisable that we add that element to SIPOC.

Also, when you are talking about input, consider all the possible inputs to the process that is defined. Generally input is said to be the trigger for the process to start. But it should also include all other things that can trigger some or the other activity in the process. This becomes useful when you are defining an entire department as a process. For example, the primary input for production department should be raw material to start production, but annual target can also be an input.

I am also enclosing a diagram of a tendering process. This diagram has been created using TIBCO. It’s a freeware and can be used for business modeling just like Microsoft Visio.

Weekend at God's Own Country

This is not exactly a detour from the topic of the blog but an integral part of it.I had seen many ads and heard a lot about KERELA - "GOD'S OWN COUNTRY". This weekend GOD gave me a chance to visit his country.
What follows is my experience with some of the most beautiful places in Kerala.

On 8th August, I went to meet my friend in a place called Kothamangala.I took a bus from Tripunithara bus stand to Muvattupura. As usual, it was raining crazy during the entire journey. I was feeling as if i am in a different world.The people, the roads,the climate-everything was very new for me.It took 45 min from Tripunithara to Muvattupuram.As soon as i reached Muvattupuram, Subin came to pick me up. Then started the ride of my life. I had never seen such twisted roads in my entire life. No traffic lights, no signals, only trees all around. Subin switched off the light of the bike for few seconds and then there was complete darkness, by complete i mean COMPLETE. There was absolutely not even a speck of light in the entire area. Finally we reached his place.

The house was big one and the family there was even bigger. I had not seen such a huge family for a very long time, almost 10 years. The last time i saw such a huge gathering was during my uncle's marriage. All the relatives of Subin were gathering for his Grandma's death anniversary. After talking to Subin's uncles, i had the first meal with the family. I guess that was the lightest meal that i had there, all the meals that followed just got heavier and heavier(of course in terms of quantity).During this entire process, more and more relatives kept coming. After the dinner we went to another relatives place to sleep. There was something very special about the house as it reminded me of my house in Kolkatta. There was a huge garden all around the house with mutiple plantations.

The next day was the BIG DAY, the day for which all the relatives had gathered. We all went to the church for the rituals. We first went to the graveyard where his grandpa and grandma were buried.Then we went inside the church for the prayers.This was the first time i saw a church from inside. It was amazingly beautiful and serene. What made it even more special was the fact that it was built by Subin's grandfather. Then came the second meal for me with the family. The amount of non-vegeterian food that was served there would have made a PETA activist call for a strike. Just a thought, don't worry nothing like that happened there.

Then we went to Subin's house which is still under construction and tried to use our architectural mind to come up with a plan. The plan that the architects had given was a lousy one(according to me).The house has two 2BHKs on the first floor and the ground floor is commercial. That would give an idea, how big the house must be. Well that house became our pub for the night. It was one of the wierdest place to sit and drink, but one of the most memorable for me.Me and Subin talked a lot about family and family values.It may sound very strange to our friends that we were talking about family values and such serious stuff, but its true.Well, that night we went back to the same place to sleep where we went on the previous night.The next day morning I came to know some very interesting things - we could hear the sound of the clouds moving some distance away, there was an insect which was making such loud noise that it can act as an alarm clock and there was some herb which can cure all stomach ailments.

My stay at my friends place was came to an end and i took a bus back to Tripunithara via Muvattupura...

When i came back to my guest house, the area around which according to me used to be so green, all of a sudden looked nothing compared to Kothamangalam. I basically stay in Bangalore. For greenery, on a scale of 100 I would rate – Bangalore – 10; Kochi – 40; Kothamangalam – 95.

I will never forget those 2 days of my life and i am happy that I am a consultant. I say so coz this is the one of the few professions where traveling comes free along with the paycheck.

Two things that i will never forget from the trip - greenery and the amount of beef that i ate....

Meeting wtih Core Committee Members

The day when we met the core committee member was very interesting. It was a bunch of 25 people ranging from executives to senior level managers. But there was one thing in common - the curious look on their face.We were introduced as specialists , I felt very nice and proud.My boss started the presentation with a brief overview of why we were there and the methodology that we are going to follow.

The curiosity in those people was worth seeing. Everybody wanted to know what is this new thing all about and how will it help them. That is when I realized that the reluctance to change is so high in the minds of these people. I will not blame them because it is normal human tendency to resist change and these people were doing it exactly the way it should be.

But by the end of the discussion the entropy (sorry for that, can’t help – I am an engineer) in their mind had reduced drastically and they were pretty much on the same platform as we were. There were few doubts here and there, which is obvious. These doubts are required also for us to understand the systems and processes of the organization in a better way.

What followed after the core committe members' meeting was incredible.......

Don't remember which day as a consultant

There are a few more learnings as a consultant that i thought can be useful.....

• Always carry a pen and a notepad to scribble down whatever is discussed. It helps a lot later when you are in the process of report writing.
• Always give due respect to the client and peacefully listen to what he/she has to say. They know about their business more than us. It is not an assumption, but a fact.
• You should always keep on asking questions till you find a convincing answer. If you do not ask your client the question then, you will have to do it later. Asking him later about it may not be that great an idea.
• Always be clear about what you are saying. Clients generally do not like consultants who give roundabout answers.
• Try to document the things as and when it is happening. Don't wait for the last day for report writing. It really becomes a herculean task then. If you spend some time everyday on the report, there are 2 advantages - the discussion is very fresh, so u remember everything; the huge task of report writing is broken down into pieces and it is easy to handle those pieces.

Many more learnings to come.....

First day as a consultant

Well, the first day was very different from what i expected.

I reached at my client location in the afternoon and found my boss waiting for me. I was a little nervous as my boss was waiting for an hour. I thought what a brilliant way to start my first day in the project. He was not furious and was pretty cool. We took a cab and came to the client location.

Just as I entered the client location, I got the shock of my life. It was green all around, something i have not seen for ages. There were trees all around and insects like milipede crawling all over the place.It was an amazingly peaceful place. The tag which Kerala Tourism uses - "God's own country" was so true for this place.

The client i am working for is a PSU. I had always heard of an PSU but never seen it from inside. But this time i got an oppurtunity to work for them. There are so many things about PSUs that will stun people who do not know about them. I will write down few of them....

1. They still use floppy disks and the older version of floppy.


2. There is a daak system for circular to be passed.( Don't ask me what is Daak system...find it for yourself)


3. Deskjet printer is a novelty, don't know when will a laserjet come here.


4. Working time : 9:30 am - 5:00 pm ( Can you beat that)

There are many more...but i will list them one by one in the subsequent posts.