Value-stream mapping, also known as "material- and information-flow mapping", is a
lean
Lean, leaning or LEAN may refer to:
Business practices
* Lean thinking, a business methodology adopted in various fields
** Lean construction, an adaption of lean manufacturing principles to the design and construction process
** Lean governm ...
-management method for analyzing the current state and designing a future state for the series of events that take a product or service from the beginning of the specific process until it reaches the customer. A value stream map is a visual tool that displays all critical steps in a specific process and easily quantifies the time and volume taken at each stage. Value stream maps show the flow of both materials and information as they progress through the process.
Whereas a
value stream
A value stream is the set of actions that take place to add value to a customer from the initial request through realization of value by the customer. The value stream begins with the initial concept, moves through various stages of development and ...
map represents a core
business process
A business process, business method or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (serves a particular business goal) for a parti ...
that adds value to a material product, a
value chain
A value chain is a progression of activities that a firm operating in a specific industry performs in order to deliver a valuable product (i.e., good and/or service) to the end customer. The concept comes through business management and was firs ...
diagram shows an overview of all activities within a company.
Other business activities may be represented in "value stream diagrams" and/or other kinds of diagram that represent business processes that create and use business data.
Purpose
The purpose of value-stream mapping is to identify and remove or reduce "waste" in value streams, thereby increasing the efficiency of a given value stream. Waste removal is intended to increase productivity by creating leaner operations which in turn make waste and quality problems easier to identify.
Applications
Value-stream mapping has supporting methods that are often used in
Lean
Lean, leaning or LEAN may refer to:
Business practices
* Lean thinking, a business methodology adopted in various fields
** Lean construction, an adaption of lean manufacturing principles to the design and construction process
** Lean governm ...
environments to analyze and design flows at the system level (across multiple processes).
Although value-stream mapping is often associated with manufacturing, it is also used in logistics, supply chain, service related industries, healthcare,
software development
Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invol ...
,
product development
In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) covers the complete process of bringing a new product to market, renewing an existing product or introducing a product in a new market. A central aspect of NPD is product design, along wi ...
, and administrative and office processes.
Identifying waste
Types of waste
Daniel T. Jones (1995) identifies seven commonly accepted types of waste. These terms are updated from
Toyota's operating model "
The Toyota Way
The Toyota Way is a set of principles defining the organizational culture of Toyota Motor Corporation. The company formalized the Toyota Way in 2001, after decades of academic research into the Toyota Production System and its implications for lean ...
" (
Toyota Production System, TPS) original nomenclature (muda):
# Faster-than-necessary pace: creating too much of a good or service that damages production flow, quality, and productivity. Previously referred to as overproduction, and leads to storage and lead time waste.
# Waiting: any time goods are not being transported or worked on.
# Conveyance: the process by which goods are moved around. Previously referred to as transport, and includes double-handling and excessive movement.
# Processing: an overly complex solution for a simple procedure. Previously referred to as inappropriate processing, and includes unsafe production. This typically leads to poor layout and communication, and unnecessary motion.
# Excess Stock: an overabundance of inventory which results in greater lead times, increased difficulty identifying problems, and significant storage costs. Previously referred to as unnecessary inventory.
# Unnecessary motion: ergonomic waste that requires employees to use excess energy such as picking up objects, bending, or stretching. Previously referred to as unnecessary movements, and usually avoidable.
# Correction of mistakes: any cost associated with defects or the resources required to correct them.
Waste removal operations
Monden (1994) identifies three types of operations:
# Non-value adding operations (NVA): actions that should be eliminated, such as waiting.
# Necessary but non-value adding (NNVA): actions that are wasteful but necessary under current operating procedures.
# Value-adding (VA): conversion or processing of raw materials via manual labor.
NNVA activities may also be referred to as "sustaining non-value adding", i.e. they have to be done, or they are necessary to sustain the business but do not contribute to customer requirements.
For additional views on waste, see
Lean manufacturing
Lean manufacturing is a production method aimed primarily at reducing times within the production system as well as response times from suppliers and to customers. It is closely related to another concept called just-in-time manufacturing ( ...
.
Using the method
There are two kinds of value stream maps, current state and future state. The current state value stream map is used to determine what the process currently looks like, the future state value stream map focuses on what the process will ideally look like after process improvements have occurred to the value stream.
The current state value stream map must be created before the future state map and is created by observing the process and tracking the information and material flow. The value stream map is then created using the following symbols:
In a build-to-the-standard form,
Shigeo Shingo
was a Japanese industrial engineer who was considered as the world’s leading expert on manufacturing practices and the Toyota Production System.
Life and work
After having worked as a technician specializing in fusions at the Taiwanese railw ...
suggests that the value-adding steps be drawn across the centre of the map and the non–value-adding steps be represented in vertical lines at right angles to the value stream. Thus, the activities become easily separated into the value stream, which is the focus of one type of attention, and the "waste" steps, another type. He calls the value stream the process and the non-value streams the operations. The thinking here is that the non–value-adding steps are often preparatory or tidying up to the value-adding step and are closely associated with the person or machine/workstation that executes that value-adding step. Therefore, each vertical line is the "story" of a person or workstation whilst the horizontal line represents the "story" of the product being created.
Value-stream mapping is a recognised method used as part of
Lean Six Sigma
Lean Six Sigma is a method that uses a collaborative team effort to improve performance by systematically removing waste and reducing variation. It combines lean manufacturing/lean enterprise and Six Sigma to eliminate the eight kinds of waste ( ...
methodologies.
Value-stream mapping analyzes both material (artifact) and information flow. The following two resources exemplify the use of VSM in the context of software process improvement in industrial settings:
* "Artifact analysis": analysis of software artifacts like requirements, use case, change request or defect report through the development process
* "Information flow analysis": analysis of information flows in the development process
Associated analysis methods
Hines and Rich (1997) defined seven value-stream mapping tools. These are:
# Process activity mapping: the initial step of constructing a map which consists of a study of process flows, waste identification, and
business process re-engineering
Business process re-engineering (BPR) is a business management strategy originally pioneered in the early 1990s, focusing on the analysis and design of workflows and business processes within an organization. BPR aims to help organizations fundam ...
.
#
Supply chain response matrix: identifying critical bottlenecks for processes in a simple diagram.
# Production variety funnel: helps draw connections to other industries that may have solutions to existing problems.
#
Forrester effect mapping
The Forrester effect map is a business technique used to analyse the disturbance on the supply chain of reorder activity.
The tool is one of the seven Value Stream Mapping tools as defined by Hines and Rich.
Forrester's research, (''Industrial ...
: line graphs showing the customer demand and production, allowing visualisation of supply and demand and potential delays.
#
Quality filter mapping
Quality filter mapping is part of the value stream mapping toolkit and is used to analyse processes/functions with respect to quality. The results of a quality filter map shows how much waste is being generated within an organisation at each stage ...
: locates product and service defects in the supply chain.
#Decision point analysis: determines inflection points for
push-and-pull demand in the supply chain.
#Physical structure mapping: combined model that overviews supply chain from an industry level.
See also
*
Business process mapping
Business process mapping refers to activities involved in defining what a business entity does, who is responsible, to what standard a business process should be completed, and how the success of a business process can be determined.
The main pur ...
*
Lean manufacturing
Lean manufacturing is a production method aimed primarily at reducing times within the production system as well as response times from suppliers and to customers. It is closely related to another concept called just-in-time manufacturing ( ...
*
Value-stream-mapping software
Value-stream-mapping software is a type of software that helps prepare and/or analyze value stream maps. The software typically helps design maps through utilizing a series of symbols representing activity and information/material flow, and as a ...
*
Value chain
A value chain is a progression of activities that a firm operating in a specific industry performs in order to deliver a valuable product (i.e., good and/or service) to the end customer. The concept comes through business management and was firs ...
*
Value stream
A value stream is the set of actions that take place to add value to a customer from the initial request through realization of value by the customer. The value stream begins with the initial concept, moves through various stages of development and ...
References
External links
*
''Value-stream mapping'' – Lexicon termat the Lean Enterprise Institute website
{{Six Sigma Tools, state=collapsed
Business terms
Lean manufacturing
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