I am a retired Process Specialist that worked mostly in the chemical industry in BC, Canada. I have learned over the many years working on processes, that everything we do is a process. I have learned that we spend far too much time working at fixing the end of the process, and not enough time working on improving the whole process. When I look at a problem in a process, I look at the whole process from the beginning to the end. I don’t just focus on the single problem in the process. I believe everything in life we do should take this approach. I’m going to spend the next while looking at the world through the eyes of a Process Specialist. I’m not a Doctor or a scientist and any suggestions I put forward should not be tried without consulting an expert or your family Doctor.
When you put your mind to it, the impossible only takes a little longer
Example of what I Mean
When an emulsion is produced for the paint industry, it has a huge amount of crud we called seeds that has to be filtered out over hours. A large percentage of the batch is lost. The company worked on many systems to speed up the filtering and it costed millions over the years. As we see the company spent lots of time, money and effort on the end of product. When I became process specialist I asked the chemists why we had all these seeds and they didn’t have the answer. I then proceeded to talk with chemists at all our raw material suppliers asking them questions about their product. I then put into practice a system that handled their products the way they should be handled. We ended the seed problem and filtered very little. It not only turned out to be a better product, it was produced faster and thus saved money.
As you see from this example I looked at the whole process not just the filtering problem. I hope all of us start to look at the world this way.