VALUE STREAM MAPPING

VALUE STREAM MAPPING, is one of the lean manufacturing tools used to remove wastes in the company. Here each word signifies the details of the process. Value, as in, the Product/Service the customer is willing to pay for, Stream is the flow of material and information from Raw Material to Finished Product, and Mapping as in flow of material and information from RM to FP. VSM is used to document, analyze and improve the flow of information or materials required to produce a product or service for a customer.

Although value stream mapping is often associated with manufacturing, it is also used in logistics, supply chain, service related industries, healthcare, software development, product development, and administrative and office processes.

There are two kinds of VSM, the current state and the future state. Where the current state is used to determine what the process currently looks like, the future state value stream map focuses on what the process should ideally look like after process improvements have been done to the value stream. To begin the process with, the utmost challenge is to learn to see(to identify) the flaws.

Before executing the process we must look into some terminologies that we will be coming across.

1. Information Flow
2. Product Flow
3. Time ladder
4. Cycle time
5. Setup time/changeover time
6. Uptime
7. Lead time
8. Takt time

1. Information Flow

It shows the communication of process-related information and the transmission of data. The process of taking in all customer requests and submitting only the approved requests into the development queue (Supplier).

2. Product Flow

This shows the flow of the jobs from raw material to finished goods in the industry.

3.Time Ladder

The Time Ladder provides a somewhat simplistic visual representation of the value stream timeline. The upper portion of the time ladder represents the average amount of time that a feature spends in the queue or waiting at each stage or gate in the process. The lower portion of the time ladder shows the average amount of time that each feature was actively being worked on, or more specifically when value is actually being added to the feature/product during that specific stage.

4. Cycle time (C/T)

The cycle time is the average amount of time it takes from the completion/deployment of one feature request to the completion/deployment of the next.

5.Setup Time (S/T)

Is the amount of time needed to prepare for a given step. For application to software development, depending on the step, this can indicate the amount of time needed to understand what specifically is being requested or the time needed to configure, spin up or allocate a test environment.

6.Uptime/ Available time (%)

Gives you an idea of the percentage of the total time that the processes or systems are actually active.

7.Lead Time

Is the measurement of the average amount of time needed for one feature request to make it through the entire development cycle concept to delivery, or from the beginning to ending fence post.

8.Takt Time

It refers to the rate at which you need to produce your products in order to meet customer demand.

How to carry out VSM?

Now let’s have a look into the steps to carry out the VSM:

1. Identify the product family
2. Draw a Current state map
3. Draw a future state map
4. Work plan & implementation

To map the current state, things that need to be considered are documentation of customer information, the basic production processes, supplier information, customer & supplier delivery schedules, information flow, and the material flow. While for the future state map, we need to know how to get the exact takt time, to develop continuous flow, use Supermarkets method to control the production, level the production volume, and level the production mix.

Why VSM?

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.

Benefits of VSM

Here are some of the benefits of value stream mapping:

• Identify waste
• Identify bottlenecks
• Make processes efficient
• Improve cross-functional collaboration
• Improve end-product quality

It may not be possible to eliminate all the wastes, but VSM can surely be considered as one the most effective ways to do so.