Walk any operations floor and you can feel it before you can measure it: the workaround that became the process, the spreadsheet that became the system, the handoff where work goes quiet for three days. Nobody decided any of it. It accreted.
Why you can't see it from the org chart
Broken processes hide because everyone local to them has adapted. The team knows the workaround. The manager knows the escalation path. The customer only sees the delay. From above, the process looks fine — because what's reported is the procedure, not the reality.
Three numbers that make it visible
- Touch time vs elapsed time. How long does the work actually take, versus how long it sits in the system? Ratios of 1:20 are common and nobody believes them until they're measured.
- First-time-right rate. What fraction of work passes through without correction, clarification or rework? Every failure here is paid for twice.
- The cost of one week's delay. Put a money figure on your average queue. Suddenly the "we'll get to it" backlog has a price tag.
The arithmetic, if you want it
Defects per million opportunities is the honest yardstick:
And process capability against your specification limits:
A process at the famous "six sigma" level runs at DPMO. You don't need to get there — you need to know your number and move it.
What to do about it
Start small and start honest: walk one process end to end, as it actually runs, with the people who run it. That single discipline — the Define phase of DMAIC, done properly — is where every recovery begins. It is also where the Chido method starts.
If you want a second pair of eyes on the walk, that is exactly what a discovery call is for.