Creating Effective Flow DiagramsA flow diagram, also known as a flowchart, is a broad term that includes several things as flowchart diagram, data flow diagram, process flow diagram, and state diagram. The term flowchart refers to a schematic or graphic representation of any algorithmic process. It is a very essential component in quality control. The other essential components are Pareto chart, control chart, histogram, check sheet, scatter diagram, and cause-and-effect diagram. They together form the quality management kit. Business presentations employ these to make clear the state of affairs clear to the audience. Often in a flowchart diagram several organizational levels are represented with the aid of designing of separate lanes. Such flowchart diagrams are called as cross functional. Each lane signifies a separate organization. The role that is to be played by the various organizational levels thus becomes clear to the analyst, and the relationship between the various levels thus gets well defined with the aid of this particular kind of flow diagram. There are several software systems that help in drawing flow charts automatically. All that one has to do is incorporate the necessary information or data. The scheme will be charted out automatically. The second major form of flow diagram is the DFD or the data flow diagram. It enables the charting out of the flow of data through a graphical representation. It also assists immensely in terms of structured designing. At first, the designer needs to draw a context level DFD. This forms the primary basis, correlating the external entities with those that are integral to the system. This primary context level DFD is then made to "explode" in order to stress on the model that is being modeled in detail. Third in line comes the process flow diagram. It is chiefly used in chemical engineering and process engineering. General flow of the various plant processes and equipments are indicated with the aid of this process flow diagram. However, a PFD or process flow diagram deals majorly with the bigger/major equipments that run in a plant. The minor details (including details of piping processes, etc.) remain completely neglected here. A PFD is also commonly called as a flowsheet. A process flow diagram typically consists of process piping, major items, major valves including the control valves, connection procedures with the other systems, recirculation streams and major bypass streams, operational data (like temperature, mass flow rate, pressure, density and so on), the names of various process streams. There are also a host of things that are not included in this system. They are the numbers defining the piping lines and the piping classes, process control instrumentation, minor bypass lines, shut off and isolation valves, maintenance vents, safety valves, etc. The other important kinds of flow diagrams are the state diagrams. Finite state machines are graphically represented with the aid of these state diagrams. There are several types of state diagrams that differ from each other on a very minute basis. Directed graph is the most important of them used to represent the finite state machines. There are also other forms of this particular type of diagram such as the harel state chart, and the UML state diagram. Each of them is purposed for specific set of systems. |