The Advantages & Disadvantages of Flow Charts

Flow charts are visual representations of a system within a system. Many companies use these to find the missing links in process and to demonstrate a process to those who are unfamiliar with the entire procedure. Some businesses use a comparison of an 'as- is' process flow chart to a 'could be' process chart. Flow charts allow different business units to see what their roles are in a process. These charts break down a process into individual activities and show the intermingling of actions betweens departments and other systems. Flow charts have ultimately changed the way organizations are analyzed and diagnosed. They are a great tool used by effective managers and leaders (Ackoff, 1999).

According Ackoff, flow charts are used to show what an organization does. They should do all of the following: 1) describe the flow of events resulting in a final product or service rendered, 2)show the flow of knowledge and instructions, and 3)show the flow of financials within the process. The flow chart is composed of action boxes and directional instructional lines that should not cross each other. There are shapes that represent delays and start and endpoints (Ackoff, 1999).

The main benefit of flowcharts is that the visual representation of processes allows those who are not familiar with the process to understand how it works and more importantly to see where there are disconnects. They simplify the processes, allowing one to see and then remove non value adding parts of that process or the entire process. These charts indicate bottlenecks that cause delays and fail points that cause the system to fail. The ultimate goal is to see the problems with a system and make changes in a attempt to streamline and improve the entire process (Klamm & Weidenmier, 2004).

As great as flow charts seem to be, they still have their drawbacks. One of the main limitations of flow charts is their inability to see external factors that were omitted from the original process. This could cause the ones analyzing the system to miss crucial parts. They also could be considered too simple. If any changes are made to a flow chart the entire diagram has to be changed. Even with these drawbacks, flow charts are still a useful tool to use in diagnosing systems (Ackoff, 1999).

There are many uses for flow charts. Perhaps the most important use it's ability to represent the open system so perfectly. Flow charts show inputs coming in and how they create the outputs. Each component of the open system is visualized in the flow chart. Management should use flow charts as a way to diagnose their organization. They should model the flow charts using the components of their system so as not o miss any crucial part (Harrison, 2005).

References

Ackoff, R. (1999). Ends Planning; Where to Go. Re-creating the Corporation: A Design of

Organizations for the 21st Century. Oxford University Press.

Harrison, M. I. (2005) Diagnosing organizations: Methods, models, and processes 3rd ed. Sage

Publications.

Klamm, B. & Weidenmier, M. (2004). Linking Business Processes and Transaction Cycles.

Journal of Information systems. Vol. 18. No.2. PP. 113-125.