SIPOC maps a process at its widest level across five columns — Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, Customers — and fits on one page by design, with five to seven steps at most in the process column.
- Suppliers — who provides what the process consumes, internal or external
- Inputs — the materials, information or requests entering it
- Process — the handful of major steps, not the detail
- Outputs — what it produces
- Customers — who receives those outputs and judges them
Its purpose is agreement rather than analysis, which is why it belongs early, before anyone maps in detail. Getting a room to concur on where the process starts and stops usually reveals that they did not — better discovered before the measurement plan is written than after.
It is also the fastest way to establish who the customer actually is. Teams regularly find they have been optimising for a recipient whose judgement does not matter.
A SIPOC with twenty process steps has stopped being a SIPOC and become a poor flowchart. Holding the whole process in view at once is the function; detailed mapping and value stream mapping exist for when more granularity is genuinely needed.
