Over-processing occurs when an employee or process inputs more resources into a product or service than is valued by the customer. Sometimes over-processing occurs because an employee hasn’t had training on the most efficient way to handle a task. Other times, it occurs because an employee or process is more thorough than is worthwhile.
A goal of any process should be to do just enough useful and necessary work to ensure that customer or end-user expectations are met.
Example
Over-processing often occurs in healthcare administrative offices during the insurance verification process. Insurance verification occurs when a healthcare providers office attempts to verify that a person is covered by insurance for the services that are about to be rendered. Depending on the type of insurance coverage and the office’s policies, a staff member either checks benefits via a computer program or calls the insurance company.
In most cases, the goal of insurance verification is simply to ensure that the insured is covered by the plan for the date the services are to be rendered. Sometimes, however, an office worker delves deeper into the verification, spending up to an hour on the phone with an insurance company to receive detailed benefits or calling back to check with another representative to ensure the original information provided was correct. While specific cases exist that require in-depth insurance verification, basic doctor’s visits don’t require this level of work. A staff member who is taking up to an hour to verify insurance coverage is overprocessing,
A value stream map is a good tool for identifying any points of over-processing. Any part of the process that doesn’t provide value could be considered over-processing; when the process features a series of linked events and none provide value, it’s even more likely that over-processing is occurring.