Value Stream Mapping of Vibration Test Data in a Product Life Cycle - Thesis Example

Lean principles and thinking are now being applied in several areas besides manufacturing in which it originated. The basic idea is “doing more with less” (Radeka and Sutton, 2007) although this is defined more precisely in the section on lean product development. The lean concepts are equally applicable to many kinds of non-production processes such as administrative processes and product development environments. These areas include office administration (Keyte & Locher, 2004), marketing (Locher, 2008), information management (Hicks, 2007), the housing industry (Kempton, 2006), healthcare (Zidel, 2006), the aeronautical industry (MacKenzie, 2006), etc.

As an example, in the banking sector, wastes could be administrative errors, incomplete or missing paperwork, customer complaints, waiting to use shared equipment, unused cash, unused office space, searching for information, duplication of tasks, etc. This shows that lean principles can easily be applied in all contexts. The applicability of lean principles to the banking sector has been studied, for example by Mauli and Childe (1994), although they referred to it as Business Process Re-engineering (BPR).

In banking, some of these processes may not be so apparent “because they are hidden in workflow systems, phone calls, and emails” (Lutz, 2010) instead of being clearly distinguishable as in production processes. Nonetheless, as discussed by Lutz (2010), the actual approach taken for applying the lean methodology should be adjusted according to the industry and also particular context.

The manufacturing context is where lean concepts originated. Here, the processes are typically already structured and clearly defined so they lend themselves to easier analysis and improvement. Lean principles in manufacturing have for decades been “associated with enhanced product quality and overall corporate success” (Dickson et al., 2009). A study by Jayaram et al. (2008) showed a positive correlation between lean design and relationship building, between lean manufacturing and relationship building, and between lean design and firm performance. This study actually suggests that relationship building is just as if not more important than the focus on improving processes. However, it is still the processes, when optimized that have a significant impact.

Lean manufacturing has been applied in areas as diverse as the UK food manufacturing industry (Jain and Lyons, 2009), pharmaceutical production (Janett, 2008), petroleum industry (Green et al., 2009), emergency healthcare (Dickson et al., 2009), and automotive industry (Yadav et al., 2010).

In Lean Product Development (LPD), the objective is simply “to produce more with fewer resources by eliminating waste” (Levy, 2009). The major approaches to LPD, identified by Radeka and Sutton (2007) are summarised in the table below.

LPD approach

Details

Toyota Product Development System

Grounded in Toyota’s research. See below. 

Lean principles in product development

This take a value-centric approach and utilizes principles such as value, value stream, flow, pull, and perfection. 

Design for lean production

The whole design is optimized to make an environment suitable for lean production.

toolboxes

Table 3: Major approaches to LPD

The Toyota Product Development System was devised by Toyota alongside its Toyota Production System and is characterized by pursuing perfection and having a mindset for kaizen. Most of the effort is directed at the early stages of product development. This approach has the major benefits of reduced time to market, productivity enhancements, increased quality, and rapid learning whereas the ‘design for lean production’ approach has the major benefits of increased quality at reduced cost (Radeka and Sutton, 2007).

In the case of engineering, it is more appropriate to use the term ‘lean engineering process improvement’ or simply ‘Lean Engineering’. The goals also differ from general LPD, as shown further below in the case study on the Lean Aerospace Initiative in section 5 (McManus, 2005).

A value stream was defined by Womack & Jones (1996) as “The set of all specific actions required to bring a specific product through the three critical management tasks of any business”. These critical tasks are problem-solving, information management, and physical transformation. These could be in the form of design, processing, and construction respectively for example. The stream begins from “the point of requested need” or upon receiving an order, to the point of “closure of all activity” which may even be after the product or service is delivered (Nash & Poling, 2008). As mentioned earlier, its context need not be manufactured as it could also be used for administrative processes (administrative VSM) or for product development (PDVSM) for example. An important distinction between VSM and PDVSM is that whereas iterations are considered as wasteful in VSM, managing iteration is a key feature of PDVSM design (MacKenzie, 2006). This study focuses mostly on PDVSM rather than (factory) VSM.

Value Stream Management thus refers to the management of these value streams, which would involve “measuring, understanding, and improving the flow and interactions of all the associated tasks to keep the cost, service, and quality of a company’s products and services as competitive as possible” (Keyte & Locher, 2004). The overall objective is to make a lean transformation of the entire enterprise.

A visual tool to assist in achieving this; to see all the process flows and communications within them, i.e. value streams, is known as Value Stream Mapping (VSM). It takes the form of a logically structured two-dimensional illustration that represents a complex set of relationships in which each component is measured and analyzed. It thus identifies opportunities for eliminating waste, improving flows, and thereby enhancing the overall value. In the scheme defined by Deming (in Keyte & Locher, 2004), VSM corresponds to the P in PDCA (plan-do-check-act) so it is part of the planning process. It must then shape the structural design, and operational processes for the improved performance of the value stream to be realized. The choice of which specific tool to use is made using the Value Stream Analysis Tool (VALSAT). VSM proves to be a valuable tool for redesigning productive systems (Lasa et al., 2008) so as to improve productivity such as increasing production output per worker (Seth & Gupta, 2005).

VSM begins with selecting a service family, in which a group of products or services share similar processes, defining the manageable boundary, and selecting the mapping team for the value stream. The mapping could be for either the current or future state. A current state map maps the work streams as they are at present whereas a future state map maps out a changed design for a lean transformation. The current state map therefore provides the baseline from which later improvements are measured and the future state map sees the value stream at a future point in time (Nash & Poling, 2008). A work plan is also necessary to implement kaizens, which is a Japanese term for stressing continuous incremental improvements in order to achieve the goal of enhancing value in the organization.

The actual map consists of three parts: (1) process or production flow shown in the middle, (2) information and communication flow shown on the top, and (3) timelines shown on the bottom. The first part resembles a flowchart, and is drawn left to right, but makes use of additional VSM symbols (see Lean Flow Consulting, 2008). Parallel tasks are shown beneath the main flow. The symbols are grouped into the three categories of process (including entities and inventory), flow (of communication, signals, etc.), and people (including transportation (Nash & Poling, 2008). It is necessary to keep in mind the actual purpose of the VSM, which is not merely to form “an artistic portrait of the flow through your value stream, but to use your VSM to see where the value is being created and identify where wasteful activity occurs” (Hoff, 2009).