Targeting EPPI

Targeting EPPI . Tools & Techniques
The Tools & Techniques of EPPI Stage 1. Targeting EPPI

This article addresses the tools and techniques used in Stage 1 of Enterprise Process Performance Improvement (EPPI): Stage 1 - Targeting EPPI. Some of these are more traditional and will be more familiar. The rest are the EPPI tools and techniques covered in prior columns.

As a quick refresher. EPPI is a systems-engineering approach for mapping the enterprise’s key systems and processes to identify and target business-critical performance improvement opportunities and better understand the interrelationships between processes before launching into expensive and time consuming improvement efforts. Unfortunately, improvement efforts too often expand (necessarily but unanticipated) and involve more Investment than initially thought when the effort began. That destroys the initial schedulesand costs as well as all return on investment (ROI) and economic value added (EVA®) projections. Targeting EPPI provides enterprise management with command and control and empowerment mechanisms to better ensure ROI and EVA by better anticipating all of the improvement complexity and by doing a better job predicting the total investment costs and the total returns.

There are two stages to EPPI:

 Stage 1. Targeting EPPI, quickly but systematically and systemically involves the right people in determining the probable causes for a performance problem or in determining the right processes and infrastructure needed to meet some opportunity, and then determining the plans, schedules, and the resourcing required to conduct the overall improvement effort in the next stage of EPPI. Stage 1 should be completed in a matter of a couple of weeks to a couple of months.