International Process Research Consortium

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Overview
 

Research Framework

Improving Processes in Small Settings (IPSS)

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IPSS Background

 

Small businesses and small groups within large organizations are special challenges of process improvement. Early research is demonstrating that while these two venues share some common attributes, they also are different in substantial ways. The IPSS project is currently scoped to address both the small business and small work group; however, the scope may be reduced to focus on just one or the other depending on decision making currently underway.

Small Businesses

In the United States, small businesses account for 99 percent of all employer firms, employ 50 percent of all private sector employees, and hold 41 percent of all high technology jobs1. Small businesses are recognized as a critical component of the US economy. In other countries, small business is the economy. With the global marketplace expanding into regions previously not considered competitive, regional support centers and governments around the world are approaching the SEI looking for ways to propel their small software and systems businesses to a globally competitive status. Likewise, large organizations with small businesses in their supply chain are approaching the SEI for help.

Through this project, the SEI seeks to achieve the following:

  • increase awareness of process excellence as an enabler to global competitiveness
  • demonstrate effective approaches to process improvement for the small business
  • provide tools for process improvement that are easily applied by small businesses

The SEI is committed to assembling small businesses, governments, large businesses, advocacy organizations, universities, and industry associations from around the world to jointly explore the unique challenges and opportunities of applying process improvement strategies in small business.

Small Work Groups

Many companies accomplish process improvement one project or organization at a time. As one IPRC sponsor put it, "all improvement happens through small groups." The smaller the project or organization, the more the constraints of the small setting come into play. So, small organizations are seeking more specific guidance to implement process improvement because they see process improvement as a means to compete for better projects and customers. Small projects have similar issues because they serve as a portion of their larger organizations' process improvement initiatives.

 

 

 

 

1These figures are from the Small Business Administration, http://www.sba.gov.