SC QUALITY GUILDSIPOC builder
SCQUALITYGUILD.COM/TOOLS/SIPOC.HTML
Suppliers, inputs, process, outputs and customers on one page, drawn as you type, with a check on the things teams usually leave out.
ON THE EXAM · CSSYB II.A.4 · FREE · NOTHING YOU TYPE LEAVES YOUR BROWSER
Q-BotClick for an explanation of this tool.For educational use. This page is a study aid. The method behind it has far more depth and detail than one page and one tool can cover, and what you see here is not everything the method offers or everything this site offers. For full understanding and application, use the governing standards and texts, and seek further education, training or qualified advice. Results depend on the data you enter, so check them before relying on them.
What a SIPOC is for
A SIPOC is a one-page, high-level view of a process, made in the Define phase before anyone maps the detail. It answers three questions the team needs to agree on early: where the process starts and stops, what goes in and comes out, and who is on either side of it. Those answers set the project's boundaries and tell you whose voice you need to hear and whose data you will need.
It is deliberately coarse. Four to seven process steps, each a verb and a noun, is the usual range. If your process column is running to fifteen steps, you are drawing a process map, which is a different tool for a later stage.
The order to fill it in
- Boundaries first. Write the event that starts the process and the event that ends it. Most arguments about scope are really arguments about these two lines.
- Then P. The four to seven major steps between them.
- Then O and C. What the process produces, and who receives each output. Customers can be internal: the next department is a customer.
- Then I and S. What each step needs, and who provides it.
Working outward from the process keeps the lists tied to it. Starting with suppliers tends to produce a list of everyone the business deals with.
What the checks look for
The builder flags a missing start or stop point, a process column outside four to seven steps, and empty columns. It also points out anyone listed as both supplier and customer, which is common (the customer supplies the order and receives the product) and worth noticing, because those people have a stake at both ends.
On the Yellow Belt exam
The 2022 Certified Six Sigma Yellow Belt Body of Knowledge places SIPOC under process inputs and outputs (II.A.4), alongside supply chain management (II.A.5). Expect questions that give you a process and ask which column an item belongs in, or what the SIPOC is used to decide. A common trap: an input is a thing, a supplier is who provides it.