5 process improvement examples to inspire change at your company

The digital age has shown us that teams need flexible, collaborative tools to do their best work. But when it comes to the intensive work of improving processes, you want to be sure your investments will pay off. 

Lucid’s innovative and intelligent visual collaboration applications have helped scores of companies identify problems and improve processes. Whether you need to enhance collaboration or find a solution for up-to-date diagramming, Lucid’s platform helps you visualize your processes with clarity and identify action steps for improvement. Read on to learn more and see five real-world process improvement examples of industry leaders who have used Lucid to enhance efficiency and alignment.

What is process improvement?

Process improvement involves identifying and improving existing processes as you analyze the operations of your business and pinpoint what you can do better. Any type of process—from collaboration with customers to mapping user journeys—can be changed to become more efficient. 

The ultimate goal is to understand and eliminate any weaknesses to help your business: 

• Increase efficiency and quality

• Reduce bottlenecks

• Minimize costs and errors 

• Enhance innovation

• Improve employee productivity and customer satisfaction

Thanks to Lucid’s intelligent diagramming capabilities, collaboration capabilities, and add-ons like the Process Accelerator, you can implement process improvement across your organization. With Lucid, not only can you visualize all of your processes, but you can also standardize how they are documented, stored, and shared—making it easier to establish consistency and efficiency.

Check out how the following companies used Lucid to improve their processes, from ensuring up-to-date documentation to centralizing resources for better alignment.

5 real-world process improvement examples

Delta Airlines: Moving from chaos to clear skies

The honeymoon period for any new job can often be short-lived, but it was especially so for Steve Groff. When Groff was hired as Delta Airlines' new process engineer at the Minneapolis maintenance hub, he quickly found that his new position faced some immediate and monumental obstacles. 

Workflows for airplane maintenance had fallen by the wayside, millions of dollars worth of aircraft parts were sitting unorganized, and an impending relocation to a new maintenance warehouse was creating headaches of its own. As Groff stepped into his new role, he recognized there was no time to waste.

Groff turned to Lucid to accomplish his many goals: visualize and streamline workflows, create new opportunities to increase efficiency, and save Delta time and money. Groff's first step was to increase inventory accuracy. With organizational structures and aircraft part ID tags in disarray, Groff used Lucid to build a process and flowchart that immediately increased worker productivity. 

With the new process in place, Groff then used Lucid to collaborate with his new department on further improvements, recording feedback from co-workers across Delta. The flowcharts resulting from these conferences are displayed in the warehouse for employees to consult throughout the workday. The seamless integration of Lucid's tools has allowed Groff and his team to continue to evolve—and has saved Delta hundreds of thousands of dollars along the way.

Hitachi: Achieving up-to-date organization

Service Delivery Manager Arun Somadathan leads a wide-ranging team that touches nearly all interactions with customers post-sale at Hitachi, a B2B service that uses data-managed solutions to help businesses improve customer experience and identify potential new revenue streams. Somadathan's team needs complete transparency and detailed outlines for each subprocess in order to succeed. 

Initially, Arun used a desktop diagramming application to map every point of the process for his team. However, the need to constantly update instructions and information quickly became a costly waste of time.

By transitioning this complicated procedure to Lucid, Somadathan's intensive diagrams are automatically saved, and the most up-to-date version is instantly accessible to any team member. "I don't have to worry about making sure that somebody is viewing the latest updates because they always have these links, so they will see the latest version," said Somadathan.

Using Lucid has helped Somadathan create a single source of truth for his team that’s easy to navigate. Quick access to diagrams that employees know are current helps them refer to processes more frequently and streamlines efficiency across the organization. 

Leading supermarket chain: Streamlining and improving process visibility

With over 200,000 employees across 11,000 stores, a leading supermarket chain has adopted Lucid as a central solution for process documentation, collaboration, and cross-functional alignment. Since there are thousands of processes to keep track of across its operations, this company focuses on streamlining and improving process visibility.

Prior to using Lucid, the company struggled with version control issues that often led to confusion and delays. Now, they use Lucid’s shape libraries and swimlanes to clearly map each step in their food safety processes, visually differentiating tasks between different departments. Every process change goes through a structured review and approval workflow, ensuring that only the latest, approved versions of audit plans are implemented companywide. This step has not only reinforced food safety standards but also increased accountability and clarity. Using custom templates in Lucid for process reviews saved 30 minutes per process plan, reducing the time it takes to create the plans by 25%.

The service quality team at this company centralizes their work in Lucid’s team hubs, providing a shared space where audit plans, process maps, and updates are stored for easy access and collaboration. By having resources stored in team hubs, the continuous improvement team saves 2 hours every week and achieves better alignment. 

Western Union: Resolving issues with real-time collaboration

Western Union's go-to-market manager Alberto relies on intricate diagrams to outline processes and responsibilities for his teams. In preparing for the launch of new products and updates to existing ones, Alberto uses his diagrams to align involved parties and easily explain practices at all points in the process.

When the company told Alberto that they would be transitioning from Microsoft Visio to Lucid, he was initially frustrated to have to learn a new system. But as he began exploring Lucid's capabilities, Alberto soon found that not only could he recreate his process diagrams quickly, he was also able to build them in less time than it took originally.

Lucid's collaboration tools were also a marked improvement from the system Alberto had previously been using. The commenting feature has been a specific boon for Alberto and his team, as it allows employees to converse and resolve issues without ever leaving the diagram.

"The collaboration features [in Lucid] save our company a great deal of time. With Visio, we were constantly emailing diagrams back and forth... now we are more efficient in time and communication."  

—Alberto, go-to-market manager, Western Union

Once a diagram is completed, Alberto can easily export his work and share it with his senior management team to quickly gain approval and launch his plan into action, helping his team solve problems faster.

Fortune 500 company: Documenting and visualizing core processes

Several departments throughout a Fortune 500 workflow management and automation company use Lucid to visualize and improve core processes. For example, the global learning and development team uses Lucid for process documentation for both internal training and customer-facing programs, such as credentialing, which are critical for their team’s external operations. The team has optimized processes that remained stagnant for years and improved continuity of documentation when team members leave or change roles within the company. 

The consulting team at this company also leverages Lucid to create dynamic, data-driven maturity assets that allow for real-time collaboration with clients thanks to features such as data linking, smart containers, and conditional formatting. Lucid also helped this team automate parts of their process, reducing the manual work involved in updating implementation plans to save 20 hours, or $2,000 a month.

In addition, the telecom product management team uses Lucid to create detailed UML models for their telecom services, transforming technical designs into easy-to-understand visual representations. By visualizing technical infrastructure in a more digestible manner, the team has better aligned with customer needs and delivered high-quality solutions, resulting in months of time savings and increased customer satisfaction. 

Use Lucid for process improvement at your workplace

These five instances are just a small selection of the many cases where Lucid helped companies drive business transformation. Whether you need intelligent, up-to-date diagramming or need to standardize the way processes are created and shared, Lucid can help you improve processes across your organization so you can streamline collaboration and achieve your goals.