Functional Flow Block Diagram

A Functional Flow Block Diagram (FFBD) is a multi-tier, time-sequenced, step-by-step flow diagram of a system’s functional flow.

The FFBD notation was developed in the 1950s, and is widely used in classical systems engineering. FFBDs are one of the classic business process modeling methodologies, along with flow charts, data flow diagrams, control flow diagrams, Gantt charts, PERT diagrams, and IDEF.

FFBDs are also referred to as Functional Flow Diagrams, functional block diagrams, and functional flows.

The first structured method for documenting process flow, the flow process chart, was introduced by Frank Gilbreth to members of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 1921 as the presentation “Process Charts—First Steps in Finding the One Best Way”. Gilbreth's tools quickly found their way into industrial engineering curricula.

In the early 1930s, an industrial engineer, Allan H. Mogensen began training business people in the use of some of the tools of industrial engineering at his Work Simplification Conferences in Lake Placid, New York. A 1944 graduate of Mogensen's class, Art Spinanger, took the tools back to Procter and Gamble where he developed their Deliberate Methods Change Program. Another 1944 graduate, Ben S. Graham, Director of Formcraft Engineering at Standard Register Industrial, adapted the flow process chart to information processing with his development of the multi-flow process chart to display multiple documents and their relationships. In 1947, ASME adopted a symbol set as the ASME Standard for Operation and Flow Process Charts, derived from Gilbreth's original work.

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