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Environmental Quality Management / Autumn 2004 / 83
© 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).DOI: 10.1002/tqem.20028
Robert B. Pojasek
QUALITY TOOLBOX
Selecting Opportunities To Improve Your Processes
Pollution prevention (aka cleaner production) is
one aspect of what business refers to as process
improvement—a form of improvement that has
flourished since the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution.
At the heart of process improvement lies the
identification and selection of improvement op-
portunities. Once potential opportunities have
been found, there must be a means for choosing
the particular opportunities that will be the focus
of the process-improvement program.
The reader is cautioned that the choice of a
process-improvement opportunity does not dic-
tate that a particular solution must be followed in
order to realize that improvement opportunity. I
add this caution since many process-improvement
specialists do not seem to recognize the distinction
between an opportunity for improvement and an
alternative solution (aka a recommendation).
This installment of the “Quality Toolbox” col-
umn begins by discussing some commonly used
methodologies that can lead practitioners into
this confusion—and then explains how using the
Systems Approach to process improvement can
help keep these steps distinct, while greatly en-
hancing the selection process.
Commonly Used Methods for ApproachingImprovement Opportunities
Pollution Prevention OpportunityAssessments
Pollution prevention opportunity assess-
ments (PPOAs) were first formalized in 1988 with
the publication of the U.S. Environmental Protec-
tion Agency’s Waste Minimization Opportunity As-
sessment Manual (EPA 625/7-88/003). PPOAs are
still the method of choice among many practi-
tioners who offer pollution prevention (P2) tech-
nical assistance.
This methodology enables a person who is in-
dependent of a facility to conduct an assessment
of the facility’s operation. Often, checklists and
literature describing sector-specific success stories
are used to support the assessment. Emphasis is
placed on materials substitution and the use of
what is referred to as “clean technology.”
Those using the PPOA approach tend to blur
the distinction between opportunities for im-
provement and recommendations for ways to
make the improvement. They often make defini-
tive recommendations that they present as “right
answers” to the problems they identify.
These practitioners generally make no at-
tempt to create a complete list of opportunities
for improving the process. In addition, employ-
ees are not actively involved in the selection of
opportunities or the derivation of alternative so-
lutions. The focus is on the facility’s wastes and
process losses, not on the process itself. Users of
the PPOA approach rarely use root cause analysis
to understand the ultimate cause of process losses
and materials use.
They also give little consideration to “sys-
tems thinking” (i.e., the concept that every-
Robert B. Pojasek 84 / Autumn 2004 / Environmental Quality Management
thing in the process is connected to everything
else). Because of this lack of systems thinking,
the alternative solutions that PPOA users pro-
pose often cause other problems after they are
implemented.
Despite these obvious drawbacks, the PPOA
approach remains vibrant today—in large part be-
cause it is the methodology with which most P2
technical assistance providers are most familiar.
Mass Balance AnalysisThose technical assistance providers who
have been trained with the United Nations In-
dustrial Development Organization (UNIDO)
method generally use mass balance to find op-
portunities for cleaner production. This meth-
odology provides a
more complete listing
of opportunities than
do PPOAs. However, it
is still focused on
wastes and not on the
process per se.
Mass balance is
also very time-
consuming and expensive to pursue. One techni-
cal assistance group using this method was quite
proud of the fact that it takes five engineers about
three weeks to produce a voluminous report,
complete with the independent recommenda-
tions that are the hallmark of the approach.
As with PPOAs, little consideration is paid to
systems thinking. Often, the technical assistance
providers ignore important supporting opera-
tions since they are considered to be separate
processes, and thus not part of the system that is
under review.
In addition, they often rely heavily on the use
of success stories; accounts of past successes typi-
cally are organized by sector and maintained in a
variety of different databases, with many avail-
able on the Internet. As with the PPOA approach,
employees are not usually directly involved in
the mass balance process.
Identifying and Selecting Opportunities withthe Systems Approach
The Systems Approach uses a very different
methodology to identify and select opportunities
for improvement.
The Systems Approach first seeks to under-
stand the production process by preparing a se-
ries of hierarchical process maps, which describe
process work steps in more detail as the user pro-
gresses through successive levels of maps. All sup-
porting processes, as well as resources used and
losses incurred, are linked to their appropriate
process work steps using accounting sheets.1
Process maps take some skill to prepare. How-
ever, the necessary proficiency can be readily de-
veloped with practice.
Process maps are first prepared in preliminary
form using process documentation from both the
facility and the available literature. These prelim-
inary process maps are then verified during as-
sessment of the process itself. Employees are ac-
tively involved in this verification activity, and
are asked two direct questions:
• What has been accomplished in the past two
years to improve this work step?
• If money was not an object and you could
have your own way, what would you suggest
could be done to improve your work step?
The answers to these questions provide the first
step toward identifying opportunities for improv-
ing the process. Identifying past process improve-
ments reminds employees that process improve-
ment is not a new program. It also creates an
impression that the process-improvement program
will simply add to what has been done before.
Because employees “never resist their own
ideas,” this method of questioning directly en-
As with the PPOA approach,employees are not usually directlyinvolved in the mass balanceprocess.
Environmental Quality Management / Autumn 2004 / 85Quality Toolbox
(that is, conserve resources and eliminate wastes)
will be a very long one. There has to be a method
to help the organization focus on the “vital few”
processes that lie among the “trivial many.”
The Pareto ScreenIn order to avoid being overwhelmed, the Sys-
tems Approach recommends that a process im-
provement program focus on only eight to 11 op-
portunities at a time. One useful tool for
narrowing down the list of potential opportuni-
ties is Pareto screening.
Pareto analysis is based on the observation
that, in general, about
20 percent of the op-
portunities that you
identify will generate
80 percent of the value
associated with your
process-improvement
program. This is why
Pareto analysis is often
referred to as the
“80/20 principle.” Pareto screening will help you
identify this essential 20 percent.
There are two key virtues of using Pareto
screening. First, it helps the facility focus on
those opportunities that are likely to be most im-
portant. Second, the results of such screening can
be converted into a bar graph. This creates an eye-
catching visual image that clearly shows manage-
ment and employees why it is imperative to ad-
dress certain opportunities.
An example of a Pareto chart for a silverplat-
ing operation is shown in Exhibit 1. The various
activities associated with the plating operation
have been organized according to the costs they
incur. As you can see, only a handful of activities
account for a large majority of the overall cost of
the plating process. This type of visual depiction
of impacts can quickly grab people’s attention
and focus their interest on key problems.
gages them in coming up with opportunities for
improvement. Contrast this interactive, “hands-
on” approach with the standard PPOA method,
which involves using checklists and does not
reach out to employees.
Hierarchical process maps encourage systems
thinking. Using them, employees can see how
each work step utilizes resources and creates
wastes. They can also see how supporting
processes add to the use of resources and create
additional wastes as a direct result of their own
particular work steps.
More importantly, employees can see that real
prevention often happens upstream from their ac-
tivity. That is, something in a previous work step
may be causing them not to have to drill a hole or
wash the assembly. Such knowledge allows re-
sources to be conserved and wastes avoided.
By contrast, if problems are solved only where
they occur, downstream consequences are likely
to remain. It is impossible to conjecture what all
these downstream consequences may be.
Another list of opportunities to improve the
process can be generated from the resource ac-
counting sheets that are prepared as part of the
Systems Approach.2 Remember that every use of a
resource (such as energy, water, and materials)
represents an opportunity to conserve the use of
that resource. Every loss of a resource in a process
represents an opportunity not to have that loss.
The available literature represents another
source of potential process-improvement oppor-
tunities. However, much of the literature is fo-
cused on wastes (i.e., losses from the process). In
order to make use of information from the litera-
ture, you will need to check it against the process-
specific information you have gathered and link
it to the correct work step in the process. Much of
the literature does not provide such a link to a
process work step.
As you can see, with the Systems Approach,
the list of opportunities to improve the process
Remember that every use of aresource (such as energy, water,
and materials) represents anopportunity to conserve the use of
that resource.
Robert B. Pojasek 86 / Autumn 2004 / Environmental Quality Management
Once you have a complete list of process-
improvement opportunities listed, assemble a
group of people who are knowledgeable about
the facility. Ask the group whether about one-
fifth of the opportunities listed (i.e., 20 percent of
the total) are significantly more important to the
facility than the remaining opportunities. In
most cases, the answer will be yes.
I have found that I am usually able to get
agreement on which opportunities should be in-
cluded in this 20 percent. If the group cannot de-
cide, I ask them to rate each opportunity with
dollar signs, using four signs ($$$$) when the op-
portunity is very important to the facility; less
important opportunities are rated with three,
two, and one dollar signs. By counting up the
dollar signs, we can see which opportunities we
should focus on when making a selection.
Opportunities that do not make the 20-
percent screen can still be included in the selec-
tion process if managers or employees are partic-
ularly interested in addressing them. However,
you should remind participants of the need to
stay focused and to make an informed decision
on which opportunities to include in the process-
improvement program.
Even after Pareto screening is completed,
there often are more than eight to 11 opportuni-
ties remaining. In such a case, some additional
method will be needed to provide further focus
and enable the final selection.
Scoring OpportunitiesScoring methodology can be useful to further
narrow down the range of opportunities. If the fa-
cility has an ISO 14001-based environmental
management system (EMS), the process improve-
ment opportunities (arranged by work step in the
hierarchical process maps) can be related to the
EMS “aspects” that are found on the resource ac-
counting sheets. You can then formally score
these aspects using the same criteria matrix that
Exhibit 1. Pareto Chart for a Silverplating Operation
Letters below bars refer to two-letter codes assigned to activities in the process.
Environmental Quality Management / Autumn 2004 / 87Quality Toolbox
with fewer than about seven or eight interrelated
projects. On the other hand, it is difficult for an
oversight committee to keep track of more than
11 or 12 interrelated projects during a given pe-
riod of time.
With this in mind, how should projects ulti-
mately be selected?
By scoring the opportunities you have identi-
fied, as described above, you can get a sense of
their importance to the facility. This should give
you an initial idea of where your priorities
should lie.
However, when first starting a process-
improvement program, other considerations may
also be important. For
instance, are some em-
ployees particularly in-
terested in addressing
one of the identified
opportunities? What
opportunities, if any,
are being addressed in
the facility’s current
budget or operational excellence programs?
Would a more formal examination of funded or
committed opportunities help ensure their suc-
cessful resolution? Do some of these considera-
tions overlap?
The greatest weight should be given to proj-
ects that employees mentioned when the hierar-
chical process maps were being verified. Next in
importance would be those that are similar to ex-
isting initiatives that may already be in the man-
agement budget, or that are currently being pur-
sued in improvement programs such as lean
production and Six Sigma.
It is a good idea to conduct a dialog about the
various projects before making the selection. It is
crucial to generate enthusiastic employee interest
in the opportunities that you select. This will
help ensure the successful implementation of the
first set of projects in your process-improvement
the organization employs to make its “determi-
nation of significance” for purposes of the EMS.
In order to obtain a Pareto (i.e., 80 percent/20
percent) distribution of opportunities, it may be
necessary to use an “exaggerated” scoring system,
such as the following:
• Low significance: 1 point
• Medium significance: 3 points
• High significance: 9 points.
Some of the most common significance crite-
ria used to score process-improvement opportu-
nities, and their associated environmental as-
pects, are as follows:
• Probability of occurrence of the impact asso-
ciated with the opportunity;
• Potential for damaging vegetation, animals,
or drinking water;
• Existence of regulations governing the oppor-
tunity or impact;
• Potential for necessitating costly remediation
activities;
• Potential for generating substantial govern-
ment enforcement penalties;
• Potential for creating a negative organiza-
tional image;
• Potential for causing full or partial opera-
tional shutdowns;
• Potential for generating substantial cost sav-
ings if the adverse impacts, risks, or liabilities
can be eliminated or minimized; and
• Other considerations deemed important by the
employees who are conducting the scoring.
Selecting OpportunitiesThe objective of these screening and scoring
activities is to select eight to 11 opportunities
that will constitute the process-improvement
program. Why this range of numbers? Because it
is not possible to have program “critical mass”
The greatest weight should be givento projects that employees
mentioned when the hierarchicalprocess maps were being verified.
Robert B. Pojasek 88 / Autumn 2004 / Environmental Quality Management
program—which in turn will help ensure that the
overall program itself will be successful.
Learning from My ExperienceI should mention here that I have previ-
ously written a column on this same topic
under the title “Selecting P2 Opportunities.” It
appeared as an installment in my former col-
umn, “Practical Pollution Prevention,” in Pollu-
tion Prevention Review.3
In that column, I offered a more specific guide
to opportunity selec-
tion. Since writing that
column, however, ex-
perience has shown
me that selecting the
right opportunity for
process improvement
is even more impor-
tant than I previously
realized, and that the decision must be made by
each facility based on its own circumstances. The
choice cannot be dictated by a set procedure that
fits all cases.
Scoring Additional Opportunities Having a complete scored inventory of po-
tential opportunities for process improvement is
of great value for any continuous improvement
program. For this reason, I allow employees to
address additional opportunities (that is, be-
yond the eight to 11 formal projects) within the
program. This also helps ensure that no one
feels left out.
These additional opportunities can be desig-
nated as “look-out” projects, to be presented to
the management oversight committee at one of
their regularly scheduled meetings. Look-out
projects require sufficient supporting documen-
tation, similar to that prepared for the formal
projects.
Alternative SolutionsOnce you have selected opportunities for
process improvement, the next step is forming an
employee team to deal with each of them. The
team should meet with a facilitator trained in the
use of the Systems Approach, in order to accom-
plish the following:
• reach agreement on a statement of what the
problem is;
• address the root causes of the problem;
• derive a number of possible alternative solu-
tions for eliminating the problem, or reducing
its intensity;
• select an alternative solution (or solutions);
and
• prepare a draft action plan for implementing
the solutions chosen.
Once these steps have been taken, the man-
agement program oversight committee can de-
cide which projects to approve. It can also make
suggestions for enhancing the implementation of
the draft action plans presented to them, and for-
malize them in accountability agreements. This
interaction provides good elements of both
“bottom-up” and “top-down” management.
ConclusionAt the end of the selection process described
here, the organization will have a set of
employee-created action plans for solving specific
problems, instead of simply having an outside
consultant’s recommendations to consider.
Because the opportunities and solutions cho-
sen via the Systems Approach are agreed upon by
employees, not imposed by someone from out-
side, they are more likely to be accepted. More-
over, creating a specific action plan makes it far
more likely that the facility will actually follow
through on the improvement process. Experience
Having a complete scoredinventory of potential opportunitiesfor process improvement is ofgreat value for any continuousimprovement program.
Environmental Quality Management / Autumn 2004 / 89Quality Toolbox
on a regular basis. The ideas for improvement se-
lected through the Systems Approach do not need
to be updated each year because this approach is
opportunity-based, not “right answer”–based.
Remember that the quality-based Systems Ap-
proach can be easily and quickly incorporated
into your organization’s culture. It can then be
expanded to cover other issues as they arise, and
as the organization seeks to continuously im-
prove its operations.
Notes1. See Pojasek, R. B. (2003). Quality toolbox: Selecting yourown approach to P2. Environmental Quality Management,12(4), 85–94.
2. For a discussion of accounting sheets, see Pojasek, R. B.(2004). Quality toolbox: Mapping information flow throughthe production process. Environmental Quality Management,13(3), 89–97.
3. Pojasek, R. B. (1998). Practical pollution prevention: Se-lecting P2 opportunities. Pollution Prevention Review, 8(2),103–110.
has shown that proposals crafted via the Systems
Approach have a significantly higher implemen-
tation rate than those arrived at through PPOAs
or mass balance analysis.
It is crucial to recognize the extremely impor-
tant role that opportunity selection plays in the
initial phases of implementing a process-
improvement program. Once the program is es-
tablished, it is also important to institute periodic
program reviews (on, for instance, a quarterly
and annual basis). Such reviews provide chances
to consider “lessons learned” and to select an-
other eight to 11 opportunities for inclusion in
the next stage of the program (e.g., for the next
budget year).
While organizations sometimes like to seek in-
dependent third-party reviews of their process-
improvement programs, it is not necessary to con-
duct formal pollution prevention opportunity
assessments or make mass balance determinations
Robert B. Pojasek, PhD, is president of Pojasek & Associates, a management consulting practice specializing in facilitat-ing programs for quality management, resource conservation, odor elimination, cleaner production, pollution prevention,safety improvement, and sustainability. He can be reached by telephone at 781-641-2422 or by e-mail [email protected].