Value Stream Mapping As A Process Improvement Tool

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“If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you are doing” 
― W. Edwards Deming

What is Value Stream Mapping?

Value Stream Mapping is a lean tool, which employs a flow diagram documenting in detail every step of a process. It is the fundamental tool to identify waste, reduce process cycle times, and implement process improvement.

Why use Value Stream Mapping?

Organizations no longer compete on product or service but they compete on experience of faster to market with quality results. In order to enable Organizations to achieve their strategic objectives, continuous improvement of the quality of products, services or processes must be ongoing. Value Stream Mappings help identify and eliminate source of waste in an Organization's development ecosystem. It is an invaluable technique to define the current state of a process and analyze it for opportunities to reduce time spent on non-value steps. 

How to use Value Stream Mapping?

Below is an example of how Value Stream Mapping was employed for identifying the wastes in current ‘As Is Process’ and then eliminating the wastes for improving the overall process in ’To Be Process’. 

In the Figure: ‘As Is’ Process, wastes in the process are marked by a triangle identifying where tasks are taking too long either by redundancy or following unecessary steps. Value Stream Mapping provides an opportunity to identify steps in the process, which provides value to the development process and those that do not. 

                                                        Figure: 'As Is’ Process

In the Figure: ‘To Be’ Process, wastes are eliminated and Value Stream Mapping is applied to create a future state process that reduces total cycle time

                                                      Figure: ‘To Be’ Process

Summary

Apply the method of Value Stream Mapping to an inefficient process within your organization and learn how to calculate the efficiency of a process from end-to-end. Learn to diagram the 'As Is' process to identify areas of waste and then develop the 'To Be' process that reduces total cycle time. An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage and Value Stream Mapping is the tool for providing that efficiency in process improvement. 

"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning"- Benjamin Franklin

Value Stream Mapping As A Process Improvement Tool was originally posted under Prokarma Blog on Oct 5th 2015