Analysing Supply Chains: Seeing The Whole

Mapping the Extended Value Stream

Description

The first element of the Lean Toolkit - 'Learning to See', describes how to map the value stream for an individual product family within a plant. As more and more people have become familiar with internal value stream mapping, the demand has grown for a systematic approach to mapping and improving the whole value stream. This workshop extends the field of view beyond individual facilities, to the mapping of multiple plants along the complete value stream from raw material to end customer.

Whenever we have mapped extended value streams, we have found that the overall performance is abysmally sub-optimal. Huge amounts of waste exist in material flows, information flows and inter-firm organisational and management processes. When all the steps and time required to move a product from raw materials to finished goods are identified, it is common to find that nearly 90 percent of the actions and 99.99 percent of the time required for the value chain's Current State create no value. In addition, the mapping method clearly shows demand amplification of orders as they travel up the value stream, steadily growing quality problems, and steadily deteriorating shipping performance at every point up stream from the customer. Yet typically no one has responsibility to improve the performance of the whole value stream.

Mapping an extended value stream is harder than internal mapping because we need to map across plant, divisional and company boundaries. In addition we must pay careful attention to the variability in order and material flows. We also need to think about simplifying complex inter-firm logistics and information flows, right sizing and right-locating facilities and serving many value streams operated by many firms. Furthermore extended mapping requires the cooperation of many departments and individuals both within and between firms. These entities rarely think about the total flow of individual products and often hide information from each other while pushing in opposite directions. However when partner firms along a value stream do cooperate to map the whole process, the potential gains are enormous, not just in terms of waste removal, but also in increased profitability, increased mutual business and increased market share with the end customers.

This workshop, based on the 'Seeing the Whole' workbook by Daniel Jones and Jim Womack, will show participants how to undertake the complex task of extended mapping and improvement using a systematic, step by step approach.

Suggested lean level

It is expected that delegates will already have a broad knowledge of lean.

Attendees should also have a knowledge and experience of creating plant-level 'Learning to See' maps and improvement plans - preferably through practical experience or at least by having attended the 'Value Stream Mapping' workshop in the Lean Pathway.

Target attendees

Managers responsible for supply chain improvement either upstream towards suppliers or downstream towards customers.

An ideal situation would be for a team of managers from two, three or more companies along a value chain to attend together as forerunner to implementing a joint value stream improvement project.

Curriculum

The workshop which will show how to map an extended value stream and develop future state maps and an improvement action plan.

The workshop will be highly participative and based around the development of a case example involving five firms along a chain. Participants will work in groups to build a current state map of an extended value stream and quantify key measures of overall value stream performance. The relevance of lean principles to the improvement of the extended value stream will be explained and delegates will be given the opportunity to apply the lean logic to the development of a Future State vision for the case study.

The workshop will be conducted by David Taylor who has, to date, applied extended mapping methods to some seven value streams drawn form different industry sectors including automotive, metals, footwear, electronic machinery and agri-foods. David will share his knowledge and experience of applying the approach and highlight the many pragmatic issues that need to be considered to carry out a successful project.

Workshop content includes:

Other Track Information

We strongly recommend that you have some experience with mapping your internal value streams using Learning to See and have read Seeing the Whole to develop an extended value stream perspective before attending the workshop.