Overview

Departmental Purpose Analysis (DPA) is a method enabling departments to:-

• Align their objectives with overall company mission
• Clarify Customer and Supplier Relationships
• Establish Measures of Performance

This is provided that the number of departments is reduced to a minimum and matched to the natural groups by prior input / output analysis and process analysis.

Features

Departmental Purpose Analysis (DPA) is a means of clearly identifying the purpose and total value added by departments. It is achieved by:-

• A task by task analysis to determine what is necessary to meet strategic needs (i.e. is the task necessary?)
• Identification of current utilisation of skills and capacity
• Recognizing that departmental processes have inputs, value added actions and outputs
• Recognising that departments have lead-times and reliabilities that need to be shortened and improved
• Assigning appropriate measures of performance to each department for total quality of performance - based on competitor practice analysis.
• Establish a discipline for looking at what we do or manage
• Viewing a departments as ‘businesses’ with inputs from suppliers and outputs to customers

This process allows managers to plan systematic improvements in interdepartmental quality.

The improvement process should be a cross-function / cross-departmental management led focus on the quality of work in every department across the company. It involves a systematic review of internal customer / supplier relationships and a consistent controlled management approach to answering three groups of questions.

Are We Doing the Right Things?

• What is the purpose of our department?
• Who are our customers and suppliers?
• What are our customer’s requirements?
• Where are we not fully meeting those requirements
• Why are we doing this activity?
• Why are we doing no-value added work?

Are We Doing Things Right?

• What is the priority issue?
• What are the root causes of our problems?
• Which is the best solution to the problem?
• Has the problem been eliminated to the satisfaction of the customer?
• Which is the next priority issue?
• What is world class performance?

Do We Continually Seek Improvement?

• When we have removed all major inhibitions to customer satisfaction how can we operate more effectively and efficiently?
• What are the priority opportunity areas for improving both effectiveness and efficiency?

Benefits

• In-depth knowledge of departmental activities, the value-added and time spent on them - the value chain for the business becomes visible
• Provides the department manager with a complete history of the inputs, the type of output to the customer and the workload required
• Provides a foundation specification for new managers / team leaders
• Gives management a working tool for defining non -conformance activities
• Permits the consolidation of recommended improvements at functional levels for optimisation
• Provides department staff with relevant and understood targets
• Supports continuous improvement practices