Recently I spoke with a customer who was setting up a training program. Getting people to signoff changes in a timely manner was the main problem he wanted to address. He asked me what kind of training exercises would help with this issue.
I had to tell him; this is one place where training won’t help. True, there may be some tips to make the review process faster, and there may be a few novice users who need to go through training. But, in general, the issues around late sign-offs are more complex.
Many companies want to improve their turnaround time to release change orders as well as other change or quality processes. Time to review and signoff is a common pain point in these business workflows. Approval times lag when people get busy, but there are steps administrators and change analysts can take to ease some of the burden of the change review board.
A good place to start by using some sort of approval matrix of the change participants. This matrix, either manually or if built in an application, automatically informs the change analyst and/or automated system regarding who next should approve and/or who should get notified. Approvers and participants can be added or removed as necessary for a given workflow. This tool allows organizations and enforcement in the approval process.
Why Am I Signing This?
If approvers ask this question, then you may be missing an important aspect of the Approval Matrix: a corresponding Responsibilities Chart. This clarifies the purpose of each required signature. If you can’t answer why a specific job function is approving, then they probably don’t need to. Removing unnecessary approvers, or changing them to notification only, can shave days off the signoff time. When approvers don’t know why they have to signoff, they may just give it a rubber stamp of approval. Or, they might ignore the approval request altogether. When that happens, your change order has become lost in the matrix.
A well-structured Responsibilities Chart will allow you to define the justification for who actually needs to signoff and when, the very information you need to create a precise Approval Matrix.
What Am I Looking At?
Your Responsibilities Chart should define why each job function approval is required and when. In general, there are two reasons to have someone approve a change order prior to release.
- Is this change the correct course of action?
- Has the change been correctly documented?
Reason 1 is often subdivided by department ownership. Product Lifecycle Managers will review to confirm this is the right direction for their product. Supply Chain will sign off regarding materials handling and delivery. Cost, safety, quality impacts will likewise be assigned to the appropriate departments.
Reason 2 has to do with how the change order is written. Does it correctly describe both the details and the reason for change? Are the Bill of Materials (BOMs), redlines and drawings or other documents correct?
Signatures at statuses after release will indicate that required implementation steps have been completed. This may include ordering materials, performing rework activities, or making data updates in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or other downstream systems. Your business may have unique post-release actions that are necessary for change implementation to be complete.
By defining and limiting the responsibility scope for each job function, you reduce the review time down to what really matters for each approver.
If you can’t identify what responsibility a job function has as a reviewer, then their approval probably isn’t necessary.
Additional Criteria
Once you’ve defined the responsibilities, you can streamline the approvals further by looking at additional criteria. Maybe finance only needs to signoff once the cost exceeds a specified threshold. Product Lifecycle Managers only need to approve for their product lines. Quality or Engineering signoffs may be distributed across different changes based on product line, assembly or material type, or other business-relevant criteria.
Lifecycle phase can be helpful criteria, too, since non-production parts and designs often require less rigorous review than product that is being shipped to customers.
Finally, the scope of change should be taken into account. The wider the impact of the change being made; the more job functions will likely need to review the change order. Whereas a narrow impact change might require fewer signatures. An accurate and complete description of the change being made is key to understanding the full scope of the change. But the best fields to use for signoff criteria are list or multi-select lists, where the data will be consistent.
Stop the Email Flood
Most Product Lifecycle Management systems send out emails like a 24-hour water fountain. Make sure your headers and text for actionable emails, such as “needing your approval” are clearly different from notification only. If you haven’t read my recent post on Those Pesky Email Notifications check it out for ways to reduce PLM emails. Your users will thank you.
Out of the Matrix and Into the Workflow
Once your Responsibilities Chart is complete, it becomes very clear who needs to approve, what their signature signifies, and when in the workflow they need to approve. You now have the information to transform your Approval Matrix into a requirements driven document, one that pinpoints the expectations for each job function at any given workflow status. This targeted focus speeds up review time, allowing change orders to be released faster.
If your changes are getting lost in the matrix, try digging deeper into who is reviewing them and why. Defining and narrowing each approver’s responsibilities will help free up both your approvers and your change orders.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Domain Systems. The author takes full responsibility for the views expressed here.
