Lean Systems

Value Stream Mapping

Now that your organization has determined its strategic goals, you need to baseline the current state of the critical processes. Current state value stream mapping is a valuable tool for understanding and documenting an end-to-end process. This chapter will provide you with a review of value stream mapping so that you can see how value flows within your processes.

THE PURPOSE OF VALUE STREAM MAPPING

Value stream mapping (VSM) is a flow charting method originally created in the Toyota Production System (TPS) to document the entire process (of a company or a department) on a single sheet of paper to encourage dialogue and understand the process better. First, you create a current state map of how the value presently flows in your organization; then, utilizing the principles of Lean, you envision a better state for how value should flow in an optimum manner in your organization: this is future state value stream mapping. Kaizen activities, which are events to overcome deficiencies in the current state that will allow the company to reach the future state are identified for implementation on the current state map. The future state map illustrates the ideal state after the changes are implemented. The future state map represented how your processes should flow.

When you use VSM, you can simultaneously analyze the flow of information and material to enable your organization to eliminate waste in both. By considering material flow and information flow concurrently, it is easy to identify and correct whether material flow is hampering information flow, or vice versa. The overall steps of VSM are shown in Figure 3-1.

Figure 3-1. Value Stream Mapping

VSM captures the flow of a product from the point that raw material enters the process to the point where a final product is delivered to the customer. This includes all value added and non-value added activities that have been accepted as necessary to produce the product. You can apply VSM to...