Goals

To explain and enhance Value Stream Mapping by incorporating the Industrial Engineering (IE) concepts of time value of money (from Engineering Economy), setup and inventory carrying costs (from Inventory Control), Little’s Law for relating WIP and order throughput time (from Queuing Theory), flow diagramming and decomposition for waste identification (from Facility Layout and Process Analysis)
To develop an enhanced set of icons for process decomposition and value assessment based on comparison and combination of the icons used for Value Stream Mapping (VSM), Flow Process Charting (FPC), Business & Office Process Charting (BOPC) and Process Analysis and Improvement (PA&I)
To link this enhanced set of icons for the development of a computer tool for VSM using COTS (commercial off the shelf software) such as Visio, Excel, SIMUL8 (for process simulation) or EasyABC (for Activity Based Costing).
To utilize this enhanced VSM model for detailed visualization and evaluation of process flows in several manufacturing facilities

Project Motivations

To explain VSM as a variation and integration of the traditional IE methods such as Flow Process Charting (FPC), Business & Office Process Charting (BOPC), Process Analysis and Improvement (PA&I) and Production Flow Analysis (PFA) for design of facility layouts. For the purpose of describing the overall scope of this project, a brief description of the four related methods is provided in the Appendix.

To develop a systematic scheme for mapping and decomposition of process flows at any level of resolution in a facility, such as workstation, cell, department, factory, office, supply chain, warehouse, etc.

To relate the concept of “value” to measures such as inventory carrying cost, material handling costs, compound interest as a function of the difference between work content and order throughput time, etc. and costing techniques such as Throughput Accounting and Activity Based Costing

To reduce and describe any process at the “therblig” level, as is done in Motion and Time Study (MTM) projects

To develop a computer implementation of VSM that could execute on a laptop (or even a handheld Palm Pilot computer)

Deliverables to Industry Partners

A comprehensive and enriched set of icons that enriches the flow mapping and analysis capabilities of Value Stream Mapping (VSM) by integrating with IE tools such as Flow Process Charting (FPC), Business & Office Process Chart (BOPC), Process Analysis and Improvement (PA&I) and Production Flow Analysis (PFA).
A series of documents that describe the concepts underlying the different tools and the synergies among them[1].
Associate the enriched icons in mapping the current state of the facility in a way that these icons could capture and recognize which processes in the system are non-valued added for improvement actions.
To create the composition of these related tools involving computerized simulation feature.

Project Timeline

A tentative schedule of this project is shown in the following table:

Necessary Tasks	Timeline
Obtain all necessary information about the current process (Product BOM, routings of components and subassemblies, demand, set-up time and processing time for each operation, travel times and material handling costs, labor and machine hour rates, inventory carrying cost rates, APR, etc.)	1-2 weeks
Develop, revise and complete the VSM map using the enhanced set of icons	2-3 weeks
Analyze the current state of the system (At this stage, interaction between the OSU team and the industry sponsor will be essential)	4-6 weeks
Brainstorm all the alternatives for process improvements	1-2 weeks
Develop and evaluate various alternatives for the future state of the system	2-4 weeks
Final presentation to industry sponsor	1 day

APPENDIX

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a tool that maps the value streams in a plant with the help of suitable icons to represent operations, transportation, information flows for production control and scheduling functions, WIP locations, etc. Each value stream represents the flows of a product or product families, starting from suppliers to the assembly line (or manufacturing cell) to customers. VSM uses a variety of icons to capture the current state of the facility and to suggest a future improved state of the facility. The icons are effective for recognizing value-added (VA) and non-value-added (NVA) elements in the value stream (or process flow path). The power of VSA lies in its simplicity and its global/business emphasis that considers flows of both products and information across the entire supply chain. However, VSM is limited to high-volume assembly facilities with stable demand for one or a family of identical product variants. It is biased towards these continuous flow environments since they are suited for Lean Manufacturing and Just-In-Time (JIT) concepts. In particular, VSM does not consider factory layout and material handling issues such as distances of travel, variety of product routings, types of material handling systems being used, various scheduling priority rules, etc. Further, unlike IE tools such as Flow Process Charting and Production Flow Analysis, it does not study the flows of resources such as consummables, fixtures, personnel, handling equipment, scrap, etc. whose utilization (and consumption) impacts the profitability of the value stream.

Flow Process Charting (FPC) is one of the most common IE tools for diagramming and economic valuation of delays and wastes in material or information flow processes in any manufacturing facility or office, respectively. The mapping process is uncomplicated and can be used to record every step in the flow of different entities (equipment, product, personnel, energy, paperwork, etc.) at every level of flow (workstation, cell, department, factory, supply chain, etc.) in a system. The activity symbols in the chart are the basis for analyzing and improving the efficiency of the process, based on the number of operations, moves, storage points, queuing locations, inspections and other delays experienced by the process. The chart also allows the reduction of costs by minimizing both quantity and duration of non-value adding steps, such as travel, storage, queuing and inspection. However, FPC has limitations since it tends to focus on the layout point of a facility and elimination of non-value adding steps, and ignores the importance of balancing the production rates at all value-adding operations to meet the takt time for order fulfillment determined by the customer. Also, this traditional focus mainly on improving the material handling and layout aspects of a facility ignores the impact of information flows on timely execution of various steps in a process. Lastly, FPC lacks the icons for information flows and process improvements to generate a future state for the process.

Business and Office Process Charting (BOPC) is similar to FPC, except that it maps the flow of information and/or paperwork in an office (or similar service environment). However, for analysis of paperwork flows, all the standard flowcharting symbols and techniques used for FPC are used. Similar to the multi-faceted uses of Production Flow Analysis to design effective layouts for manufacturing facilities, analysis of information and paperwork flows in an office helps to evaluate and redesign the organizational structure, reporting mechanisms, building layout, functional responsibilities of various departments, etc. The goals, methods and results of BOPC, FPC and Production Flow Analysis (PFA) are synergistic, resulting in continuous improvements in business and manufacturing processes.

Table 1 Symptoms of Inefficient Business Process Flows in Offices with Potential Solutions

· Processes have high completion times Need: Create work teams dedicated to groups of processes

· Processes have a large number of steps Need: Combine steps in the processes

· Processes have too many manual steps Need: Automate the processes

· Processes have multiple variants Need: Standardize the processes

· Space utilization in the office is inefficient Need: Develop a new office layout

· Flows of orders and people in the office is chaotic Need: Create work teams and co-locate in “cells”

Process Analysis and Improvement (PA&I)

is a classical IE technique that documents the entire series of steps in a process, then seeks to improve the process by first identifying waste, irrationality and inconsistency in the steps, then identifying ways to improve one or more of the steps, then implementing the improvements that have been identified. PA&I is a component of the Seven Quality Tools and Seven Management Tools that comprise a typical Total Quality Management (TQM) or Continuous Improvement (CI) program. Processes can be mapped using software tools, such as Visio, ABCFlowcharter or PowerPoint, and evaluated using simulation software tools such as SIMUL8 or ARENA.

[1] Three Powerpoint presentations are being developed: (1) a summary of the Rother and Shook book on VSM, (2) a lecture module on Process Analysis & Improvement (including Flow Process Charting) and (3) a lecture module on Production Flow Analysis.