Efficiency is defined as the accomplishment of certain goal with economy of resources, therefore it is implicit the efficacy concept; that leave us in an interesting position since we can’t assure that we are efficient if we don’t have defined the goal in terms of means to use; efficiency degrees will a step away of your hands unless you do something.
When we talk about processes we refer to them as the chain of activities with a certain purpose that could be measured; by this definition we are ready to apply the efficiency concept as a mathematical equation as it follows:
We need to be able to establish numbers to represent results and resources that were used, therefore this mathematical operation must produce a number greater than one, because if not, the economy of resources wouldn’t be applied to the process we are measuring. Sometimes we had to set the “one” as a convention for comparison’s purposes, for instance if the result of any given process is 10 pieces that demands 20 hours, it’s obvious that 10 over 20 results in 0.5, but you can go saying that 20 hours is equal to one, so the efficiency for that moment is 10 because you adopted a particular convention.
If we can collect those numbers for certain period of time, we will be able to graphic the efficiency evolution of the process we are studying, getting something similar to the following chart:
This chart could be used to represent the own set of historical data, there you will see the evolution; but if you are able to get more numbers you could contrast your particular set of data with comparable processes or better with your competitors’ indicators.
Finally, there is an aspect that usually offers some inconvenient in this task, let’s talks about how we could integrate quality to the basic equation previously introduced; the answer is very simple; you only need to add a particular variable to the mathematical expression:
In the field, translating quality to numbers isn’t an easy job; especially when you say that quality is defined for customer’s perception, because of that you will need a methodological work to produce consistent results to guarantee that quality is always measured in the same way. Additionally you need to put hands on all factors that are involved in quality measurement to translate them in a single number; at the end you will have to convert those figures to a scale where the “one” must be set to the acceptable level, which is defined by the organization management.
Filed under: business, control, efficiency, eficiencia, management, measurement, medición, model, proceso, process
