The Supplier-Input-Processing-Output-Customer (SIPOC) diagram is one of the standard process management tools in the quality management toolkit, often used in Six Sigma process improvement projects. While it provides a useful framework for process planning, measurement, and analysis, its sharp boundaries exclude consideration of effects on the larger social and environmental contexts in which the process in focus is embedded, engendering a fractured perspective that can lead to process optimization at the cost of social and environmental degradation.
I present here an enhancement to the SIPOC diagram (also integrating IDEF0 graphical notation) that enlarges its scope of consideration to include environmental factors, allowing these social and environmental externalities to be considered in process design, measurement, and optimization.
Please reach out if you are interested in collaborating on its further development, including metric and methodology specification.
SS SIPOC: Sustainable Systems/Source-Sink Supplier Input Output Customer Diagram [IDEF0 notation] by Keith A. Gillette is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.