Every factory has two versions of its processes.
The first version is documented: the official workflow, the ERP transaction, the approval matrix, the standard operating procedure, the escalation path, and the process map.
The second version is lived: the phone call before the system update, the spreadsheet created because the official report arrives too late, the supervisor’s shortcut to keep the line running, the maintenance technician’s informal note, or the quality engineer’s workaround when the workflow cannot absorb an urgent deviation.
Many organizations describe this second version as non-compliance.
Sometimes they are right.
But not always.
In real industrial operations, workarounds can represent waste, risk, or operational intelligence. The difficult part is not detecting that they exist. The difficult part is understanding what they mean.
Workarounds Are Not Always the Problem
A workaround usually appears when the formal process cannot absorb operational reality.
A machine fails under production pressure. A material batch arrives with incomplete information. A quality decision is required before the formal approval chain can react. Maintenance cannot close a work order correctly because the asset hierarchy is wrong. The MES asks for a reason code that does not describe the real failure mode. The ERP requires a transactional sequence that does not match the physical flow.
So people adapt.
They call someone directly. They bypass a screen. They create a local file. They keep a notebook. They delay the transaction until the end of the shift. They create an unofficial rule that everyone understands but nobody formally owns.
From a narrow BPM perspective, this may appear to be a process deviation.
From the shopfloor, it may be a necessary response to keep production, quality, or safety under control.
That distinction matters.
If every workaround is treated as bad behavior, the organization loses the opportunity to understand what the formal process is unable to handle.
The Hidden BPM Inside Operational Shortcuts
In many factories, the real process is not the one represented in the process management tool. It is the combination of system transactions, human judgment, informal escalation, local routines, exceptions, and decisions made under pressure.
This is why workarounds deserve serious management attention.
They often reveal issues such as:
- Process rules designed far from the gemba.
- Systems that enforce administrative correctness while ignoring operational sequence.
- Unclear ownership between production, maintenance, quality, planning, and logistics.
- Missing decision rights for abnormal situations.
- Master data that does not represent the physical factory.
- KPIs that reward speed while procedures demand discipline.
- Workflows that assume stability in environments where variation is normal.
A workaround is rarely just a shortcut. It is often a signal.
The question is whether the organization has enough operational maturity to read it correctly.
When a Workaround Is Waste
Some workarounds are simply waste.
They duplicate information. They create manual reconciliation. They consume time. They hide defects in the formal process. They create parallel systems that nobody maintains but everybody depends on.
A common example is the spreadsheet that appears because the official report is slow, incomplete, or not trusted. At first, it is a practical solution. Then it becomes normal. After a few months, the spreadsheet becomes the real control system, while the official system becomes a delayed historical archive.
This creates a dangerous illusion.
Management believes the process is digital. The shopfloor knows the process is manual.
The same pattern appears in repeated manual corrections in ERP, handwritten downtime notes entered later into MES, or maintenance feedback completed only because the system requires the work order to be closed.
These workarounds do not improve operations. They compensate for weak process design, poor data quality, inadequate usability, or a lack of trust in the system.
In this case, the right question is not:
“Who is bypassing the process?”
The better question is:
“Why does the official process force people to build another process around it?”
When a Workaround Is Risk
Other workarounds are more serious because they create operational, safety, quality, or compliance risk.
A temporary maintenance fix becomes permanent. A quality hold is bypassed because customer shipments are urgent. A machine parameter is adjusted without traceability. A material substitution is communicated verbally. A deviation is accepted informally because “we have always done it this way.”
These are not merely BPM issues. They are governance issues.
They indicate that the organization may have procedures, but not enough operational discipline to protect them under pressure.
This is where leadership must be careful. Blaming operators, technicians, or supervisors is often too easy. Many risky workarounds are created by the management system itself: unrealistic production targets, poor escalation routines, slow approvals, weak cross-functional ownership, unreliable master data, or KPIs that punish transparency.
People rarely create risky shortcuts because they enjoy risk.
They usually do it because the formal process is slower than the operational problem.
That does not make the workaround acceptable. But it changes the way it should be solved.
The response should not be limited to enforcement. It should include process redesign, clearer decision rights, faster escalation, better data quality, and more realistic governance of abnormal conditions.
When a Workaround Is Intelligence
There is a third category that is often ignored.
Some workarounds are not waste and not negligence. They are practical intelligence developed close to the work.
An experienced maintenance technician knows that a certain alarm usually indicates a mechanical issue rather than an electrical one. A production team has learned to sequence changeovers differently because the real constraint is cleaning time, not machine availability. A quality engineer knows that two minor deviations together may create a higher risk than either deviation alone. A planner calls logistics before releasing a schedule because the system stock is technically correct but physically unreliable.
These behaviors may not be documented, but they contain operational knowledge.
The mistake is to romanticize them blindly. The opposite mistake is to eliminate them blindly.
The correct response is to study them.
Some should become standards. Some should become system rules. Some should become escalation criteria. Some should disappear because they create unacceptable risk. Some should become input for process redesign, MES configuration, master data correction, training, or AI-supported decision logic.
Workarounds are not automatically bad.
Ungoverned workarounds are bad.
Process Mining Can Show the Deviation, Not the Meaning
Process mining can be powerful in this context, but only if it is used with operational humility.
It can reveal rework loops, skipped steps, late approvals, manual corrections, repeated returns, exceptional paths, and high process variability. It can show where actual behavior differs from the designed process.
But an event log does not explain the full industrial context.
A deviation in the system may be a compliance issue. It may also be a rational adaptation to a broken workflow. It may be caused by wrong master data, unclear ownership, a training gap, a system usability problem, or an escalation path that is too slow for the reality of production.
This is why process mining without shopfloor interpretation can easily become another form of management theatre.
The data can show where reality differs from the model.
Only operational dialogue can explain why.
The Real Leadership Question
The mature response to workarounds is not to eliminate them all.
It is to classify them, learn from them, and govern them.
Leaders should ask:
- Which workaround is compensating for a poorly designed process?
- Which workaround is creating unacceptable quality, safety, traceability, or compliance risk?
- Which workaround contains practical knowledge that should be formalized?
- Which workaround exists because the system does not reflect operational reality?
- Which workaround is caused by conflicting KPIs or unclear decision rights?
- Which workaround has become normalized because nobody owns the underlying problem?
This requires a different level of BPM maturity.
Not BPM as documentation.
Not BPM as workflow enforcement.
But BPM as operational learning.
A process model is useful only if it helps the organization understand, control, and improve how work really happens. If the official process is clean but the real process is full of invisible adaptations, the organization is not in control. It is only well documented.
From Deviation Control to Process Learning
Workarounds should enter the management system.
They should be visible in daily management, problem-solving routines, process reviews, audits, system design, and continuous improvement activities.
A practical approach is simple, but demanding:
- Identify recurring workarounds.
- Understand the operational reason behind them.
- Classify their impact: waste, risk, or intelligence.
- Assign clear ownership.
- Change the process, system, standard, training, data model, or governance mechanism.
This is where BPM connects with Lean, MES/MOM, process mining, industrial AI, and operational excellence.
Lean helps identify waste, abnormality, and deviation from standard work. MES/MOM connects execution with traceability. Process mining reveals actual process behavior. Industrial AI may help detect recurring patterns and support decision-making. But none of these disciplines replaces ownership.
Without ownership, workarounds become normalized.
With ownership, they become input for better process design.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Workarounds exist because operations are more complex than process diagrams.
They are created in the gap between the designed process and the lived process.
Some should be removed immediately. Some should be redesigned. Some should be controlled. Some should be formalized. Some may reveal that the people closest to the work understand the process better than the people who designed it.
That is not a weakness of BPM.
It is the reason BPM must evolve.
The future of process management in industrial environments will not be defined by forcing every activity into a perfect workflow. It will be defined by the ability to understand how work behaves under real conditions, govern exceptions intelligently, and convert operational adaptation into better process design.
A workaround is a message from the real process.
The real test of leadership is whether the organization can distinguish noise from knowledge, risk from resilience, and non-compliance from evidence that the system itself needs to improve.
Questions Worth Taking to the Gemba
Which recurring workaround is compensating for a broken process, system design, or data model?
Which informal practice currently supports performance but creates hidden quality, safety, or traceability risk?
Which workaround contains operational knowledge that should be converted into a standard, system rule, escalation criterion, or decision-support logic?
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