Process Mapping & Discovery
We document how work moves today across teams, systems, and decision points. This includes process maps, stakeholder insights, pain point discovery, and identification of handoff breakdowns.
Lean Six Sigma
Process Analysis
Value Stream Map your current workflows, identify inefficiencies and breakdowns, and build a practical rollout plan your team will actually adopt.
Clarify roles, handoffs, and ownership across teams- Reduce redundancies, bottlenecks, and rework
- Get process maps, strategic recommendations, and an adoption-focused rollout plan
Trusted by teams navigating operational change, cross-functional complexity, and growth-stage process redesign.
Recommended for:
- Retail
- Consumer Goods
- Financial Services
- Marketing
- Manufacturing & Distribution
How Process
Inefficiencies
ImpactExecution
If your business has recently gone through a reduction in force, a merger, or a major workforce optimization effort, you already know the symptoms:
- Ownership of work is unclear
- Governance is inconsistent
- Visibility is limited
- Handoffs break down
- Work gets duplicated, delayed, or missed entirely
- Tribal knowledge gets lost
Most companies respond by adding tools, creating workarounds, or pushing teams to move faster. But when the underlying workflow is unclear, that usually creates more variation, more confusion, and more waste instead of real improvement.
Lean Six Sigma helps solve that by starting with clarity first: how work flows today, where it stalls, what inputs are missing, and what outcomes matter most.
What’s Included
Led by a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, this engagement is designed to move your organization from reactive problem-solving to a structured, scalable operating model.
We combine process discovery, analysis, and practical change planning so you leave with a clear path forward.
Optimization Exploration
We analyze redundancies, delays, unclear ownership, missing governance, and other sources of operational drag. Using Lean Six Sigma principles, we evaluate where waste, variation, and rework are slowing your business down.
Strategic Rollout Plan
You receive prioritized improvement recommendations, a practical rollout roadmap, and a team adoption plan designed to support implementation instead of resistance.
SIPOC-Informed Analysis
When applicable, we use a Lean Six Sigma approach called SIPOC. This specialized form of analysis helps identify process inputs and outputs at key milestones, helping uncover process gaps, redundancies, and delays.
What LeanSixSigmaAnalysis
Helps You Fix
We help leaders create visibility across the business, uncover where friction
exists between departments, and propose workflows that are easier to
manage, measure, and scale.
Restore Visibility
See how work moves across departments, where it gets stuck, and where reporting breaks down.
Reduce Waste
Identify duplicate work, unnecessary approvals, rework, waiting, and process confusion before they continue draining time and resources.
Improve Adoption
Build changes around real workflows so the final process is practical, usable, and far more likely to stick. We support this by involving the people doing the work.
WhyPolished Geek
We do more than document workflows, we help you understand your business as a system.
That means looking beyond isolated team issues to uncover where complexity, unclear ownership, missing inputs, and broken handoffs are hurting execution.
Our Lean Six Sigma Black Belts
Certified by the Purdue University College of Engineering
Liz Perry, MSOD
Senior Process Consultant
Liz combines Lean Six Sigma expertise with a human-centered approach to process design. She focuses on fixing broken workflows by aligning them to how teams actually work, delivering processes that are both efficient and easy to adopt.
Jeni Tholmer
Senior Process Consultant
Jeni brings deep experience in operational efficiency and workflow optimization. She helps teams cut through complexity, remove unnecessary steps, and build scalable processes that improve consistency and day-to-day execution.
Roy Dawes
Senior Process Consultant
Roy specializes in structuring complex systems and improving cross-functional workflows. With a strong background in project and systems management, he turns unclear processes into reliable, repeatable systems teams can execute with confidence.
FrequentlyAskedQuestions
What is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt?
A Lean Six Sigma Black Belt is a certified process improvement expert trained to lead operational efficiency initiatives within an organization.
They typically lead cross-department improvement projects, analyze workflow data, map operational processes, and guide teams through structured improvement frameworks such as DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control).
Organizations use Lean Six Sigma Black Belts to help improve productivity, reduce errors, and build more scalable and measurable operational systems.
What is process mapping and why is it important for business operations?
A process improvement consultant analyzes how work flows through your organization and identifies opportunities to make those workflows more efficient, consistent, and scalable.
This typically includes:
- Mapping current workflows across departments
- Identifying bottlenecks, redundancies, and gaps
- Clarifying ownership and handoffs between teams
- Recommending process improvements and governance structures
- Developing a practical implementation or rollout plan
The goal is to help businesses reduce operational friction, improve visibility, and create systems that support growth and long-term efficiency.
What is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt?
Lean Six Sigma is a structured methodology used to reduce inefficiencies, eliminate waste, and improve consistency in business processes.
It combines two approaches:
- Lean principles, which focus on removing unnecessary steps and improving workflow efficiency
- Six Sigma analysis, which reduces errors and variation in processes
By applying these methods to real operational workflows, organizations can reduce cycle times, improve team alignment, and make processes easier to manage and measure.
What is a SIPOC analysis and how does it help improve workflows?
A SIPOC analysis is a Lean Six Sigma tool used to understand a process at a high level before making improvements.
SIPOC stands for:
- Suppliers
- Inputs
- Process
- Outputs
- Customers
This framework helps organizations identify missing inputs, unclear ownership, inconsistent handoffs, and gaps in accountability. By understanding these elements, businesses can design better processes that support both internal teams and customer outcomes.
What does a process improvement consultant do?
A process improvement consultant analyzes how work flows through your organization and identifies opportunities to make those workflows more efficient, consistent, and scalable.
This typically includes:
- Mapping current workflows across departments
- Identifying bottlenecks, redundancies, and gaps
- Clarifying ownership and handoffs between teams
- Recommending process improvements and governance structures
- Developing a practical implementation or rollout plan
The goal is to help businesses reduce operational friction, improve visibility, and create systems that support growth and long-term efficiency.
