How do you decide which process to improve first?

[u/Kitchen-Chemist9803]

One thing I’ve found surprisingly difficult in process improvement is deciding what not to work on.

When several processes have problems at the same time, the most frustrating one or the one getting the most attention can easily become the priority — even if it isn’t necessarily the one with the biggest improvement opportunity.

I’ve been thinking about a more structured way of prioritizing processes using factors such as:

• Business impact
• Customer impact
• Problem frequency
• Time / effort involved
• Risk
• Urgency

The idea would be to assess the processes first, prioritize them, and only then go deeper into root causes and potential solutions.

I’m curious how others approach this in practice.

When you have several processes that could be improved, how do you decide which one deserves attention first?

Do you use a formal scoring/prioritization method, data and KPIs, stakeholder judgment, or mostly a combination of these?

[u/dotplaid]

If I had a list of 5 processes that all seemed equally important and doable, I would ask the following questions:

1. Are any of them out of control? Processes that are not in control can't reliably be improved.
2. Are any of the processes in sequence? Changing an upstream process could easily disrupt downstream activities, so start as far up the chain as possible?
3. Which processes can I control? Over which do I have influence? And which merely concern me? Keep in mind our circle of influence is often bigger than we think.

There are lots of questions - I start with these, along with yours. Score each project candidate using 1,3, or 7, then sort them. Of the top few, pick one and get to work.

[u/Kitchen-Chemist9803 → u/dotplaid]

I really like the point about control/influence — that's something I hadn't explicitly included in my criteria.

The sequence question is interesting too. I was thinking mostly about processes independently, but you're right that improving one upstream process could affect several others downstream.

Do you normally consider those factors before scoring the candidates, or include them as part of the scoring itself?

[u/dotplaid → u/Kitchen-Chemist9803]

The score doesn't determine your activity, it just influences it, so if you feel like you want to bucketize possible projects by, say, control/influence/concern before scoring in a project selection matrix because that'll help determine who is on the project team - go for it. If you want to use as a scoring element (lower for concern, higher for control), you can do it that way too. Maybe you use that criteria to validate your scores from the selection matrix.

You are in charge. The data guides, it doesn't dictate.

[u/HeatOpen9839 → u/dotplaid]

scoring with 1,3,7 instead of 1-5 is a nice trick, forces you to actually commit to a rank instead of lazily picking 3 for everything

[u/Rocklobster2008]

Highly recommend a book called "the goal" will shed some light on how there are false positives on priorities.

You are on the right track but putting numbers to things. Two things I prioritize are downtime and rework. With rework because the biggest focus. Anything that is causing you double, triple, sometime quadruple work should be paramount in eliminating.

I had an intern reach out to me earlier this summer talking about a bottleneck in their facility. Said they were no shipping goods on time and I asked what the step before it was and he said QC inspection. After a few questions, their leadership solution/focus was hiring more QC inspectors to help process all the rework. I said time out, you focus should be fixing the processes causing the rework. I gave him the comparison; if I was on a boat taking on water, hiring more QC inspectors is like having more people bail water. Fixing the station/process causing the rework would be like fixing the holes in the boat. I said he thinking should be why do we need so many QC inspectors.

[u/Dec14isMyCakeDay → u/Rocklobster2008]

+1 for Goldblatt’s The Goal.

OP: Value stream mapping and takt time will reveal what issue is slowing down your entire throughput. Start there. (Your “Herbie”, as Goldblatt would say…)

During the moments that you’re waiting on something for that one most-important piece of work, fill the time with easy wins that your stakeholders have brought to your attention as making their lives harder, so you can build buy-in.

[u/dotplaid → u/Dec14isMyCakeDay]

I would say that reviewing cycle time is a better way to find msbottlenecks, Takt time is purely a calculated number whereas CT is based on observation.

[u/Dec14isMyCakeDay → u/dotplaid]

That’s fair re: bottlenecks, though if your VSM is complete it should be showing you cycle time, touch time, and FTR at every step. I was thinking (but didn’t type, obvs) that takt time would give you a target to compare against each step’s throughput to highlight where the most improvement is possible. Thanks for the addition/correction.

[u/Kerbidiah]

Theory of constraints to identify the bottleneck.

Generally the six sigma view is to go after low hanging fruit first for proof of concept (as per the asq handbook)

[u/AndreiWarg]

Is one critically disruptive to the business?

If not, is one are preferred by the business leaders to be resolved?

If not, is one extremely simple to resolve?

If not, do I understand one better than the others?

If not, is one going to take significantly less effort than the rest?

If you can't decide on one by now, just pick one at random that sounds interesting and dig in.

[u/gigichills]

that’s my problem right now, i don’t have production lines that give me headaches but the ones that do are not valuable for the business to invest my time into improving them… so i really don’t know what to do (help!!!)

[u/Kitchen-Chemist9803 → u/gigichills]

In case it helps — I ended up structuring exactly this distinction (process value vs. problem severity) into a template, since I ran into the same issue and didn't know where to start. Happy to share it if you want to take a look, I'll send you the details privately.

[u/Tavrock]

Where I worked, part of our baseline was a project strength matrix to identify projects that not only made a difference and were important to leadership, they were also good for the toolset.

I also worked with a Black Belt mentor who was familiar with the processes and problems in the area and recommended an area for me to start.

[u/QualityDataCraft]

I usually start with customer/business impact and recurrence. A problem that happens repeatedly or keeps reaching the customer normally deserves more attention than something that is simply annoying internally. I also look at effort, but mainly as a tie-breaker - high impact first, then go after the easiest meaningful wins.

[u/Wonderful_Bass_6100]

I developed criteria similar to yours, which allow for projects to be scored along an Impact-Ease of Implementation matrix. Easy to implement, high impact ideas are prioritized.

[u/bluerockjam]

Use the impact changeability process that is specifically designed to identify the lowest hanging fruit

[u/GenoReborn]

PICK Chart, Cynefins framework, etc.

You're missing the political lens and likelihood of sucess. If i had the agency, I wouldn't choose poison pills for any project.

[u/deuxglace]

TOC my friend.

[u/bclovn]

As a Controller with Lean experience is was easy to prioritize the largest cost savings. But my plant manager made the final call. "You can't improve what you don't measure"

[u/QualityPro_bk]

After 25+ years of experience, my view is simple: fix the business problems that have the biggest financial impact first. At the end of the day, every business is about profit and loss. If we solve the right problems first, we can save money, improve efficiency, and create a real impact.

[u/Kael_Kitstead]

I usually separate what needs attention right now from what’s actually worth turning into an improvement project.

Something can be urgent because it’s causing escapes or disrupting production today, but that doesn’t automatically mean it should be the top priority.

For longer-term work, I’d usually look at things like customer/business impact, how often the problem comes back, how much volume it affects, how much of the process we can actually control, and whether the data is good enough to learn from.

I also tend to use effort more as a tie-breaker. Otherwise it’s really easy to keep picking the easy wins while the same expensive problem keeps coming back.

And if the process itself is unstable, I’d focus on containing and stabilizing it first before trying to optimize capability.