One level down
The map shows what feeds what. The turtle shows how one process actually runs.
An interaction map earns its keep by staying readable, so it only has to
answer one question: which process feeds the next. The moment you start hanging
inputs, outputs, equipment and metrics off the arrows, nobody can follow it —
and none of that detail belongs there anyway. It belongs in a turtle diagram or a
SIPOC, one process at a time.
A note on how many processes you should have
Most quality systems are drawn with too many. Management Review, Context of the
Organization, Risk & Opportunity, Quality Objectives and the Quality Policy are
usually activities inside a Management process, not five processes. Document
control, training, calibration, internal audit and corrective action are usually
activities inside Support. And plenty of shops have no Purchasing process at all
— it sits under Operations, because there is no purchasing manager.
A useful rule: if nobody is primarily employed to execute an activity, it is
probably not a separate process. JBird lets you split one out when you really
want to — it just doesn't push you into twelve processes on day one.
That rule is in the product, not just in this paragraph. JBird's archetype library
states it before you pick a starting shape, and shows it landing on opposite answers
about purchasing for a machine shop and a distributor, then on a separate answer
again about design for a shop that employs engineers — the same rule, applied
to whoever you actually employ. See how that works
→
One process: every turtle leg, its interfaces, and a SIPOC —
all generated from records you already keep. Click to enlarge.
Where the content comes from
Nothing on that page was typed twice. With what is the equipment and
operating environment already on the process; with whom is the owner,
designee and team from your people records, with their training requirements;
how is the sub-steps plus the procedures and work instructions tagged
to that process at their current revision; how measured is the KPIs
and the audit interval. If a leg is empty, it says so — a thin process
definition shows up as a gap you can find, rather than a blank box.
In the SIPOC, a supplier or customer you have actually linked — through
shelf-life control, a calibration provider, a contract review — comes first by
name. Where there is no real link yet, it falls back to the upstream or downstream
process from your interaction map and marks it Internal, so the row is
honest about which is which.
Between the two sits the process's interfaces — each one with
its direction, the process on the other end, and what actually flows. That is there
for a specific reason: inputs, outputs, activities and interfaces are the four things
an auditor has to record on the PEAR, so the page an auditor reads is the page they
can fill the form from.
