“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” -H. James Harrington
Processes are everywhere. Some are obvious, some are important, occasionally you’ll find one that’s both.
Process engineering is often associated with the oil and gas industry, and for good reason. Making crude oil into useful chemicals involves a number of steps, and each one of those steps are often called unit processes. Heating the crude, removing contaminants, distilling, converting- all of these things is a step that can be optimized to whatever criteria are important. The people who develop the recipe and conditions for each step are called process engineers.
Process engineering isn’t just oil and gas, though. Look at any manufacturing facility – inputs turn into outputs. How? Through a series of steps. Processes.
It’s also more generally true of any business. For example: turning leads into happy, paying customers? That’s a sales process.
But it’s not limited to the world of business. Hobbies, athletics, cooking, how we make a loved one feel special – these all involve processes that, while we might not pay a lot of attention to them, can have a huge impact in our daily lives.
I’ll be exploring a few processes on this page, some superficially and others in depth. I’ll try to emphasize what impact the process makes. Process changes can have wide-ranging impacts too, and decisions about “improvements” really ought to consider all of them. And always remember, if you can’t measure it, it can’t be “improved”.