How can you conduct a value stream mapping exercise in a complex process?

Before jumping into doing a value stream map in a complex manufacturing or supply chain process, you have to know…. What problem are you trying to solve? Are you trying to… - Just learn how to do a VSM exercise? - Build understanding of the complex process? - Identify your bottleneck/constraint - Teach your people how to see waste (especially overproduction…) - Already start to look at advanced material and information flow optimization to reduce lead time and inventory The strategy, approach, and depth of your VSM exercise will be completely different depending on the why, and if you’re not careful with this, your risk it becoming a waste of time and hurt your credibility with your team. Especially in a complex value stream.

I worked with a team mapping one of their products. I found it important to listen for the underlying issues. Listening for the red flags that kept being brought up. Like we are always making changes to the order or we have missing information on the order. This information made us go to the upstream process and VSM the sales and order entry processes. Fixing these issues that were interruptions to flow were critical.

In my view, a successful VSM workshop or exercise should commence with: 1) a clearly defined objective and scope, 2) appropriate target audience, and 3) a comprehensive briefing for all participants to align everyone's understanding before the mapping activity begins, 4) effective documentation, especially of the process flow, becomes critical in the later stages when consolidating the discussed outcomes into digital form. Even a minor mistake in documentation can lead to significant efforts in detection and correction.

In an industry any of the manufacturing process should be driven by the VSM and this process needs to be a TOP driven. VSM is a tool where we can easily define the entire flow e.g information, product etc in the process.

I experienced that the best way to select the right scope of the VSM is to go for 1) components for which the most complete data is available and 2) start with ONE component intentionally (this can be either the most produced component, the newest, the most critically important in terms of quality). Very often a multi-product overly complex VSM will remain hanged on the walls without leading to the necessary improvements

One thing I have found helpful is to capture live measured data and not the "usual/normal" values. Very often, operators will be convinced that the theoritical cycle time is kept while it is often influenced by recurring disturbances in the VSM

It is essential to understand the data you gather and ensure it is accurate. The entire process will break down if the data isn’t reliable. Direct observation is preferred to validate other sources of data.

Investment in new and improved equipment may be required and the cost/benefit needs to be assessed. Optimizing an outdated process may not be enough to compete or stay ahead of the pack.

++ GEMBA walk by CFT is required. We need to map NVAs at GEMBA only. .

Hi, Daily you will find atleast one improvement in the shop floor, which can be lined up with similar problems we are facing on day today basis. Brainstorming session will only give results when you are discussing the issue with cross functional team rather than process team. I have experienced one classic example where we used to run crusher machine with a prime over connected 10 HP, but input material is very light on weight, then we designed a machine bu reducing the prime over to 3HP and we are getting the same results what above machine was doing. Conclusion is Imagination power and brainstorming session with cross functional team will give you good ideas and results.

Incentives can be put in place and share value of the improvement as monetary reward with the colleagues having come with the solution to the problem. Also a way to recognize the bottleneck in the VSM is tracking the area with most WIP inventory or high leadtime/utilisation rate. Work with priority on the bottleneck.