How to estimate process costs with flowcharts (301665)

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A data-rich flowchart helps you do the following:

• Create numerical and inventory reports with which to estimate how long a process should take, how many resources it requires, and how much it costs.
• Compare processes with one another and choose the more efficient one.
• Track the efficiency of processes over time.
• Reuse the data in a database.

When you store data with the shapes that represent process steps, you turn a flowchart into a powerful evaluation tool.

Add Data to a Flowchart

In Visio, a flowchart can be much more than a picture; it can be a valuable medium for storing data. Each shape in a drawing can act as a kind of visual database field that stores data you can retrieve in a report. For example, a shape in an office-move flowchart can store data about the cost, duration, and resources involved in the step or process that the shape represents.

You store data in property fields associated with shapes; the data is not displayed as part of your drawing, but you can report on it and automate calculations so that the drawing does the math for you.

Flowchart shapes have pre-defined Cost, Duration, and Resources property fields in which you can view or enter data. You can also add custom fields.

Add Data Fields or Types That You Pick Yourself

While most flowchart shapes come with three pre-existing property fields, you may also want to track other types of data. For example, you may want to track the number of permanent employees and the number of temporary or contingent employees involved with each step in a process.

Or, you may want to add property fields to one of the types of flowcharts that doesn't come with existing fields, such as Mind Mapping, Cause and Effect, Data Flow, or IDEF0.

Make Reports from Your Flowchart Data

After you add data to flowchart shapes, you can generate reports that do the following:

• Provide a list or inventory of the data so that you can easily discern patterns, relationships, and other correlations.
• Present the results of calculations, such as total, average, or median, so that you can evaluate processes and make comparisons.

You can save a report as:

• A report shape that appears in your flowchart, if you want the results readily available in your diagram.
• A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
• A Web page.
• An Extensible Markup Language (XML) file.

Export Flowchart Data to a Database

You can use the Database Export Wizard in Microsoft Visio 2002 to move the data that you have stored in your flowchart into a database for reuse in other ways. You just tell the wizard what data to export and what type of database to create, and then you're ready to start exporting.

Make a Flowchart from Data

If you have collected data for a particular process, such as how long each step takes and how much it costs, and then stored the data in Microsoft Excel (.xls) or text (.txt) format, you can automatically generate a flowchart from the data file by using the Import Flowchart Data Wizard.

How to Set Up Your Flowchart Data File

You need to add some information to your data file before the Import Flowchart Data Wizard can use it to generate a flowchart. The wizard must know the following:

• The exact names of the shapes and stencils that you want to use to create your flowchart.
• Which shapes in the flowchart that you want to connect to one another.

As you set up the data file, keep in mind the following:

• Each step in the process corresponds to a shape in the flowchart.
• Each step, or shape, is represented by a row in the data file.
• Each type of data that you are tracking (such as cost or duration) is represented by a column and will appear as a data field associated with the shapes in your flowchart.