Today I bring you the "Why" of Value Stream Mapping.
This value stream mapping presentation provides a brief history of value stream mapping, a comparison to simple process mapping and an excellent description of the process. It's a comprehensive presentation, perfect for a group training session.
Apart from the nuts and bolts of value stream mapping, however, this presentation delivers the reason for using the tool. Many times we get caught up in the mechanics of our lean tools. We expect some kind of improvement just by doing value stream mapping.
But value stream mapping is a higher level tool. The improvements that we derive from VSM are system level goals, that generally require a lot of work and perhaps significant capital investment. You can't just do a value stream map and expect to be 50 percent improved the next day.
Sure, you can get some quick gains during a value stream mapping session. Just like any kind of analysis of a process, you'll readily see all kinds of small things that could be improved in each process. But since value stream mapping approaches the whole value stream, the focus is on improving the whole, not just the parts.
Value stream mapping provides a blueprint for further continuous improvement activities. The presentation describes the future state value stream map as a "Vision". And that's the Why! The goal is to provide some direction for your company. Where shall we start? Let's do a Value Stream Map and figure it out.
The presentation also includes an addendum that describes all of the symbols used in a value stream map. If you ever want to do your value stream map in Powerpoint, then these symbols are handy to copy and put into your own presentation.
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