Business Excellence Consortium

Value Stream Mapping (VSM)

Identify waste and improve customer satisfaction

A critical aspect of Lean is the Value Stream Map, which enables you to understand and analyze your processes to uncover waste and inefficiency. It is a powerful, visual Lean tool that graphically identifies every step in a process flow, giving visibility to both the value-adding and non-value-adding steps. Identifying the value-adding and non-value-adding steps is key to implementing Lean. This effort aligns with your key business objectives, defining priorities and resources such that the most pressing issues are addressed first to ensure creation of the annuity effect. The VSM module is a three-day event focusing on a real-world process, many times at a BEC member site.

Prerequisites: Lean Overview

Topics include:

• An introduction to world-class organizations and the characteristics that they possess. You will understand what Lean is, the principles of Lean, what Lean tools are available, which Lean tools are most effective, how Lean methodology supports your business initiatives, and the role they play in the Lean journey
• The framework by which you can evaluate the existing processes and motivate people to make process improvements as part of their daily work
• Developing a Current State Map to graphically identify the process as it exists today. Process times, wait times, queues, and buffers are documented and added to the map. Working with a team, you will then evaluate each of the process steps to determine if a step is:
• Value-adding, from the perspective of the customer,
• Non-value adding, or
• Non-value adding but necessary. These are the steps that are seen as not adding value by the customer, but are necessary for the organization
• Analyzing the Current State Map to determine key system constraints
• Understanding the level of quality of the current process and elements of total lead time to find opportunities for improvement
• Determining the priorities for change and measurement, identifying the high leverage projects to ensure that activity will not be confused with results
• Creating the Future State VSM and the associated Action Plan to implement the future state map and ensure that the gains achieved during the event are sustained

VSM benefits include:

• Helps you break down communication barriers
• Provides you with the basis for an implementation road map
• Identifies waste so you can eliminate it, contributing to improved customer satisfaction
• Creating a vision of the future by uncovering wastes and opportunities to create flow – and making them visible to all
• Enabling broad participation in shaping the future

Upon completion, you will:

• Understand Lean principles and Lean cycle methodology
• Know the definition of value stream mapping
• Be able to prepare the current state map (with hands-on simulation exercise)
• Be able to map the Lean value stream
• Be able to prepare the future state map (with hands-on simulation exercise)
• Generate a future state map
• Achieve the future state (planning with host company)