Describe an organization you’re familiar with. Ideally, you’re either working for this organization, or have in the recent past. The description should be detailed enough to support the second task, which is to:

Think of a specific process you’re familiar with. The process should be sufficiently important to merit improvement, and also sufficiently complex to offer room for improvement. Filling a coffee cup, for example, could be considered a process, and may be important, but it’s so simple that it’s difficult to see how it could be improved. On the other hand; running an aircraft repair facility is a process within the larger process of running an Air Force Wing, and while it’s definitely important, it would be too complex for this SLP.

Any process is embedded in a context. This is the organization which provides its resources, its inputs, and either consumes or distributes its output.

Before going further, please read all of the SLP assignments, to make sure you don’t do everything at once. That would result in an overly long paper, which despite its length, wouldn’t have sufficient details or adequate explanations. For this SLP, the specific tasks are:

• Describe an organization you’re familiar with. Ideally, you’re either working for this organization, or have in the recent past. The description should be detailed enough to support the second task, which is to:
• Describe a specific process that takes place within the organization. As noted above, the process should be important enough, and complex enough, to meet the needs of all four SLP assignments. The process description should include, in as much detail as possible,
  • what the process does,
  • the resources dedicated to the process by the organization,
  • the inputs consumed by the process, and
  • the outputs produced by the process.
• What sort of improvement could be made in the process? It’s not important to be specific, since Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) envisions incremental changes that take place over an extended period of time. All that’s required is a general statement, such as “make easier,” “reduce error rate,” or “increase efficiency with respect to the (labor/materials/time) required.”

Bear in mind that resources, inputs, and outputs may consist of materials, products, or services, or any combination thereof.

SLP Assignment Expectations

1. There are no page limits. Write what you need to write, neither more nor less. Make each sentence count! (Having said that; it’s unlikely that one page would be enough, and very likely that eight pages would be too much.)
2. Ensure that your answer reflects your detailed understanding of the theory and techniques taught in this module.
3. References and citations are required. This requirement can be satisfied by citing the module Home page, and (for the SLP) the DOD CPI Guidebook.