Value Stream Mapping and Design

This course is designed to support a lean transformation team charged with designing a future state vision for your operations and developing a specific implementation plan for getting there. We offer this class in special versions for manufacturing, health care, office/transactional systems, and service operations. Our content goes way beyond the approaches of well-known references such as Learning to See, giving a systematic and comprehensive approach mapping and operations restructuring for enhancing value delivery, eliminating waste, designing cells and clines, establishing effective work and information flow, designing appropriate production control and visual scheduling procedures, defining implementation plans, and installing appropriate operational support systems. Each class is built around a realistic and comprehensive case study -- supported by videos, models, and hands-on-processes – where students map the current state, document waste and specific countermeasures to eliminate it, and define a comprehensive future state plan. They learn principles and a restructuring process that can be effectively applied in your operations. This course is scheduled over 3-4 days, depending upon the specific content that your organization needs. We strongly urge that this class be combined with an ILS-lead value stream mapping activity where your team’s learning is applied and advanced to develop detailed maps and transformation plans for an important value stream in your operations.

The first part of this course focuses on production control, pull systems, and visual scheduling, which are important issues to address in any future state design. These topics are taught using a series of simulations and design exercises that vividly illustrate key concepts and procedures. Subsequently, the class goes into current and future state mapping where students immediately apply what they have learned in a realistic, comprehensive case study. This case study is based on real world facilities that we have mapped and restructured, and it is designed to illustrate the application of key value stream structuring principles and the effective future state design process that ILS has developed.

When combined with an ILS-lead value stream mapping activity for your operations, the benefit to your operations will be enormous. Not only will the learning of the team be enhanced, but your organization will get a future state plan for an important value stream that will lead to dramatically improved performance. We often augment the team who went through the value stream mapping training with additional front line, supervisory, and support personnel so that that the future state plan benefits from collective knowledge of your operations and has wide buy-in. The ILS coordinators for this effort have both strong facilitation skills and experience in lean system design to insure the success of such an effort.

Students who take this class will learn…

• Principles of pull systems, classes of pull systems (including route-specific, part-specific, and CONWIP) and procedures for designing the structure of an appropriate pull and visual scheduling system for a given application
• Practical procedures for executing a value stream mapping activity, including product family definitions,, scope definition, value stream decomposition, model line strategies, team formation, effective execution of the mapping/planning process, and practical systems for getting thorough input and buy-in to the future state design
• A systematic procedure for future state design. This includes definition of the value proposition, operational alignment for maximum value delivery, customer interfacing needs, cell and line formation, pacemaker definition, structuring of pull and visual scheduling systems, and future state operational support systems.
• Ramifications of alternative flow structures on system performance, including parallel versus serial structures, alternative queue structures, utility of replication, effective management of “monuments”
• Structural approaches for improving production control including structuring to support short lead times from pacemaker to customer, establishing kitted flow, postponement strategies, and preferred target structures for high-variety/custom manufacturing where variety must originate early in the routing
• Realistic capacity analysis, defining a future state that avoids built-in waste
• Overall facility layout to support the future state design