Learning to See: Value Stream Mapping to Add Value and Eliminate MUDA

Section III, entitled, "What Makes A value Stream Lean" is especially helpful. By doing the mapping and working toward the seven guidelines outlined in this section, we have made dramatic progress in our lean transformation. Using "Learning To See" in conjunction with another offering from the Lean Enterprise Institute ("Making Material Flow"), you can transform your plant. The only other requirement... get out from behind your desk and just do it!

I cannot recommend this book highly enough!


So you want to learn how to map the value stream?   November 22, 2004
Lean Manufacturing Engineer (Overland Park, KS USA)
26 out of 29 found this review helpful

This is definitely THE starter book to learn vsm. Yes more examples would help, and yes so much information is covered by such little prose. The more I learn and practice lean, The more I am convinced of the importance in using value stream mapping to insure that the lean implementation process benefits the value stream (the so called critical path of the production process).
This key concept is where Six Sigma fails, and that is how do you select a Six Sigma Project that is going to impact the value stream?
The authors almost dare you to work through the ONE example you are to analyze on your own but LEARNING TO SEE starts you on the way to becoming a lean sensei.
STUDY STUDY STUDY this book.


Customer Review   August 16, 2004
A. Lwowski (Toronto)
17 out of 21 found this review helpful

This book is written just like a book on lean manufacturing should be: short, to the point, and no crap. It's very informative, easy to read, a no academic wishy-washy stuff. A great buy!


Excellent introduction to VSM   February 12, 2009
O. David (Schweiz)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

PRE-REQUISITE for VSM: (recommended)

Whatever approach to continuously display and improve processes you might choose, you will always need to measure a few basic parameters. Meanwhile Process Tagging&Mapping results only in a visible display of a process after analyzing the Tagging-exercise, Value-Stream-Mapping (VSM) forces you to follow every process/ task, from your customer(s) up the stream towards your supplier(s). So VSM is real "going-to-the-gemba" (go see yourself) - a very efficient way to get real insights because a good picture always says more than a thousand words - and levels the insights for everyone. The title of this book Learning To See therefore sticks to the heart of Lean and how to display it : learning to see non-value added tasks and step-by-step elimination of waste.

What do you need to know, before starting to learn the VSM-method, in order to get the most out of this approach? There are a few parameters describing every process-task. It's not rocket-science, but someone seriously studying about operations should first of all start to learn a few basics. This basics are about how systems interact (SDB: system dynamic behavior). This basics of SDB will help you to proceed with VSM and to understand :

- what parameters you need to measure and how they interact to total system performance
- what do this parameters tell you and therefore what are future improvement steps
- very important: you will be able to simply check the data for consistency: e.g. does Little's law hold in the long-run ? Can the production be achieved or are there any workstations with an utilization u larger than 100% ? Generally speaking, is there any flaw in the data measured ?

There are different books about SDB or including SDB - take your time to learn the basics and you will better understand and use the VSM-method.


ABOUT this BOOK:

The book always takes a look from a customer perspective, applies to a single plant level and for a specific product/parts family. There are two examples used in this book, a quit simple linear process to describe the proceeding (ACME_Stamping) and a further more complex example (TWI_Industries) for yourself as a home-work exercise. Based on the ACME_Stamping example, the book proceeds as follows:

1.) What is VSM and how to select an appropriate product family

2.) Step by step drawing of your current-state map: starting downstream at the customer (demand) and measuring/ displaying process parameters and WIP going upstream in the plant towards the suppliers. You will find a simple definition of some lean measures as Cycle-time, Value-Creating-time and Lead-time

3.) Theory about what makes a value-stream lean : excellent guideline with 7 main points, how to proceed, when your current-state value-stream is laying in front of you. The guideline uses simple examples and shows the most frequent VSM-icons for illustration purpose. This guideline includes the meaning of Takt-Time, what to use where flow does not apply (supermarket, FIFO-lane, sequenced pull), what is a pacemaker process and why to use it, how to level the load (and mix), how to create an initial pull and what is pitch , the importance to develop the ability to produce Every-Part-Every-X to an ever shorter time

4.) Based on the ACME_Stamping current-state example and the knowledge provided by the 7 guidelines, the future-state VSM is developed. Considering there are always different solutions to improve something, the authors explain the importance to define in advance from a customer perspective , whether you might go for an Assemble-To-Order (ATO) or a Make-To-Order (MTO) layout. This important difference drives how your future-state Value-Stream should look like and strongly influences your customer lead time, overall lead time and other performance measures as the number of Work-In-Process and the Throughput.

5.) In order to achieve the future-state, the necessary improvements per loop (refers to control loops) are broken down to the single action steps required. The authors show how to develop a simple Yearly Value-Stream Plan, which shows for every loop the measurable goals to be achieved and schedules the single action steps required to implement the process improvement. Continuous process improvement never stops and considering stretch targets for further improvement, you will continuously improve your processes together with your workforce.


For every improvement issue you need to apply suitable tools/ methods helping you to achieve step-by-step improvements. In order to learn how to reduce change-over-time, how to improve machine/ process availability and how to reduce scrap&rework rates, you may start to read about SMED, OEE / TPM, ZQC and 5s etc. This is not part of this book and needs some further reading by your own.

Even though this book merits its 5 stars, there are a few minor issues, I did not completely agree with - this does not reduce the value of this book at all. My discrepancies are: the missing capacity in the ACME-Stamping example (current-state: ASSEMBLY#1), the to low avg. lotsize in the TWI-Industries example (current-state) and finally some missing important information about how to determine the buffer-size of a FIFO-lane (to prevent starvation by blocking).

I read different books about VSM, but this book is clearly the simplest introduction to VSM for a beginner. No other book provides so much basics easy explained to get really started. Later on, for further development of your knowledge and to learn about how to proceed with a higher product mix, the book Creating Mixed Model Value Streams - from Kevin J. Duggan - is recommended. To include office processes as well in your optimization - the book The Complete Lean Enterprise - from B. Keyte / D. Locher - will do a good job. In office-areas of highly customized product offering - where VSM is quit tricky - I stick with Process Tagging&Mapping (compare Quick Response Manufacturing). Sometimes your intuition might tell you, that VSM is not applicable because of high product-mix variability. In this case simply start with a Product Family Analysis - this is the fundamental requirement to change from any process-oriented layout to a customer/ product oriented layout. Not all product families are completely customized and you might find suitable candidates, meanwhile other product families can be solved by virtual cells and other lead-time reducing approaches.

To start your VSM journey, do you need any consulting from outside? In my opinion this might depend mainly on your internal knowledge about System Dynamic Behavior. If this knowledge is weak, any help from outside is welcome - else you might take off on your own.

Enjoy reading,
Oliver David







Learning to see   December 16, 2008
Paulo Manuel Santos
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

This is a basic book. It takes like 45 min to read, and a whole life to put to practice. Buy copies of this book and give them to everyone in your company. It details the first, most basic step of any business improvement startegy: learn how to observe and map your processes. No improvement can be achieved if you do not know what is happening right now.