APPLYING VALUE STREAM MAPPING
FOR PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
Sreekumar.R
M.TECH IV th sem student
Govt.R.I.T ,Kottayam.
sreerpil@gmail.com
Abstract-Value Stream Management is an orderly
approach that allows plant personnel the
opportunity to plan how and when they should
make the improvements to meet customer needs .
The process of mapping the material and
information flows of all components and sub-
assemblies in a value stream that includes
manufacturing, suppliers and distribution to the
customer is known as value stream mapping
(VSM). It is the setting up of a system for material
to flow smoothly through the various
manufacturing processes at the speed required to
meet the customer demand. VSM has proved
effective in identifying and eliminating wastes in a
facility with similar or identical product routings,
such as in assembly facilities.The study is being
done at a public sector unit ,which produces
mainly Brushless Alternator.Focus of study is 4.5
KW Alternator.Value stream mapping is done at
the Rotor manufacturing process.The study
involves drawing of Current value stream mapping
whereby identifying the sources of
waste ,differentiating Value added time and non
value added time and finding out the ways to
minimize wastes and non value added time and
developing a future state value stream mapping
incorporating the improvements to be done.
Finally,gain in production output, reduction of
work in process and reduction in non value added
time are reported.
Key words:value stream,cycle time.lead time
1.1 INTRODUCTION
For the last two decades the companies in
different industrial sectors are striving to cut down the
cost of production in order to survive in the highly
competitive market evolved after the advent of
Globalisation,Liberalisation and privatization.The
most of the organisations under gone
downsizing ,restructuring, application of modern
production management tools in order to increase the
productivity by reducing the cost of production and
reducing the lead time and thereby sustain the
competitive advantage in the competitive global
Dr.M.S.Jayamohan
Asst.Professor,
Govt.R.I.T ,Kottayam.
jmohanms@gmail.com
market .At this juncture the concept of Lean
manufacturing and the various modern concepts and
tools were evolved.
The cost of correcting a product or service failure
increases incrementally (as much as tenfold) as it
proceeds through each major stage of development,
from concept to the customer : Poor design and
development processes can add significant cost to any
business. In addition, most industries now experience
significant pressure to reduce the lead time to market
for new products and services. As organizations face
increasing competition, speed to market can become
not only the key differentiator (the thing that sets one
organization apart from the next), but also the key to
survival.
The world is changing quickly, consumer
expectations are high, and companies must be quick
to adapt if they are to survive and thrive.
Organizations need proven concepts for reducing lead
time—and the tools to do so—if they are to remain
competitive. Lean development is one such tool.Lean
is defined as a systematic approach to maximizing
value by minimizing waste, and by flowing the
product or service at the pull of the customer
demand.These key concepts of “value,” “flow,” and
“pull,” align with the ultimate Lean goal:
“perfection,” or a continuous striving for
improvement in the performance of the organization.
The typical benefis of the successful application of
Lean include greatly reduced lead times of 40 to 90
percent, reduced process times of 30 to 50 percent,
and improved quality performance of 30 to 70
percent.
Given these results, why is it that so many companies
have yet to tackle their development processes and to
apply proven Lean concepts to them? The answer may
lie in the nature of the development process. Some
organizations claim that high variability in the
development process is the reason that “development
is different,” and is why “Lean does not apply.” In
these organizations, often the lead time and amount of
effort necessary to complete the development process
can vary greatly from project to project. The
naysayers believe, then, that Lean only applies to
repetitive processes, such as the manufacture of
standard products.However, this is not the case. Too
often the root causes of this variability are left
unaddressed, with the rationale that they are a natural
part of the creative process. These numerous and
actionable root causes, if addressed, can greatly
reduce process variability, decrease waste, and
improve flow. These are just some of the benefits that
Lean offers.Another reason for the reluctance to
implement Lean may be the nature of the people
involved in the development process—the knowledge
workers—and a fear of hindering their creativity by
instituting standard work procedures and other Lean
concepts. The majority of product or service
development involves understanding what
information is needed, where the information can be
obtained, and what to do with it once it is in hand.
This all involves process, and processes can be
streamlined and standardized using Lean concepts. In
turn,once these processes have been streamlined,
organizations often find that they have more time for
truly creative activities. There are numerous books on
the subject of product development, most tend to
focus on the myriad development-related tools (e.g.,
design for manufacturability), or promote sequential,
gate-based processes Lost in many of these books are
the key principles upon which a Lean development
process is based. Jones and Womack (2000) define
value stream mapping as ‘the simple process of
directly observing the flows of information and
materials as they now occur summarizing them
visually and then envisioning a future state with much
better performance’
Value stream mapping is a method of visualizing the
flow of a service, a product, or information.It provides
a system’s view of the flow of work, involving
multiple processes, that goes well beyond traditional
process mapping techniques. Through the use of
symbols or icons, it conveys a great deal of
information in a succinct manner. Also,it incorporates
process and system-related data to further increase the
power of the mapping methodology. As such, value
stream mapping is the assessment and planning tool of
Lean practitioners, and an enabling tool to apply Lean
thinking.
1.2LITERATURE SURVEY
1.2.1History of Value Stream Mapping (VSM)
The use of waste removal to drive competitive
advantage inside organizations was pioneered in the
1980s by Toyota’s chief engineer, Taiichi Ohno, and
sensei Shigeo Shingo and is oriented fundamentally to
productivity rather than to quality. The reason for this
is thought to be that improved productivity leads to
leaner operations which help to expose further waste
and quality problems in the system. Thus the
systematic attack on waste is also a systematic assault
on the factors underlying poor quality and
fundamental management problems.
The seven commonly accepted wastes in the Toyota
production system were
1. Overproduction (faster-than-necessary
pace)
2. Waiting
3. Transport (conveyance)
4. Inappropriate processing
5. Unnecessary inventory (excess stock)
6. Unnecessary motion
7. Defects (correction of mistakes)
The use of Value Stream Mapping (VSM) has been
attributed to the cause of much of the success that
Toyota of Japan has had since the 1980’s. Developed
during the work conducted by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota
in the 1960’s and 70‘s, at its basic level VSM is a
systematic methodology to identify wasted time and
actions in a manufacturing process. In more recent
times VSM it has been used to re-engineer businesses
because it identifies unnecessary effort and resources
to permit simplification and streamlining of
operations processes. In Taiichi Ohno’s words - “All
we are doing is looking at the time line from the
moment the customer gives us an order to the point
when we collect the cash. And we are reducing that
time line by removing the non-value-added wastes.”
(Ohno, 1988) It is useful to explain the meaning of
several key concepts used in VSM. These are: what is
meant by a process, what waste is, what is meant by
‘flow’, what constitutes value-adding, along with
what is needless non-value-adding and what is
necessary non-value-adding.
1.2.2 Value Stream Mapping (VSM)
Value Stream Mapping is a method of recording a
product's production path (materials and information)
from door to door. It can serve as a starting point for
management, engineers,production associates,
schedulers, suppliers, and customers to recognize
identify waste and itscauses. The VSM process
involves physically mapping the current state while
focusing on thedesired goals, or the future state map,
that can serve as the starting point for other Lean
improvement strategies.
A value stream is all the actions (value-added and
non-value added) required to take a product from raw
material to the customer, the design flow from
concept to completion. Taking a value stream view
means looking at the whole picture, not just individual
processes, and improving the whole, not just
individual parts. Value Stream Mapping is a pencil
and paper tool that helps to see and understand the
flow of material and information as a product makes
its way through the value stream. The meaning is
simple: Follow a product's production path from
customer to supplier, and draw a visual picture of
every process in the material and information flow.
Within the production flow, the movement of material
through the factory is the flow that usually comes to
mind. But the information flow must also be
considered since it tells each process what to make or
do next; both flows must be mapped.
1.2.3 LEAN MANUFACTURING
Lean manufacturing has come to stay in the area of
manufacturing for past few years. The concept
originated in the Japan after the second World War
when Japanese realized they could not afford the
massive investment required to build facilities similar
to those in the USA. The goal of lean manufacturing
is to reduce waste in human effort, inventory,time to
market and manufacturing space to become highly
responsive to customer demand while producing
quality
products in the most efficient and economical manner
(Todd 2000), labour, overproduction, defects, space,
materials, energy, Time and transport (Nicholas1998,
Boeing 2000) Waste takes many forms and can be
found at any time and in any place. There is the waste
of complexity. Waste consumes resources but does
not add any value to the product. Russell and Taylor
(1999) define waste as anything other than the
minimum amount of equipment, effort, materials,
parts, space Proceedings: International Conference on
Advances in Mechanical Engineering-2006 (AME
2006), December 1-3, 2006 Baba Banda Singh
Bahadur Engineering College, Fatehgarh Sahib,
Punjab, India and time that are essential to add value
to the product. Lean manufacturing combines the best
features of both mass and craft production: the ability
to reduce costs per unit and dramatically improve
quality while at the same time providing an ever
wider range of products and more challenging work
(Womack et al. 1990). Value stream refers to those
specifics of the firms that add value to the product or
service under consideration. It is a far more focused
and contingent view of the value-adding process.
Lean manufacturing uses tools like
one-piece. Flow, visual control, Kaizen, cellular
manufacturing, inventory management, Poka yoke,
standardized work, workplace organization and scrap
reduction to reduce manufacturing waste (Russell and
Taylor 1999). Over the years, many lean
manufacturing tools to support value stream have
been developed and many more are being proposed
every day (Schonberger 1982, Dillon 1985, Womack
et al. 1990, Sako 1992, Lamming 1993, Barker 1994,
Liker et al. 1997, Cusumano and Nobeoka 1998,
Childerhouse et al. 2000, Feld 2000, Taylor and
Brunt 2001). VSM tools were popularized by Rother
and Shook (1999). These concepts are developed
primarily with two requirements: one to understand
the interdependence of one function, department or
even whole unit over another, and to capture a holistic
view about a situation where the conventional
industrial engineering recording tools do not help
much. As the complexity of manufacturing and
business is growing newer, value stream tools are
emerging. Today, there exists a plethora of different
tools and techniques developed for different purposes
and waste reduction or elimination. Although several
researchers like New (1974, 1993), Forza et al.
(1993), Beesley (1994) and Jessop and Jones (1995)
have developed individual tools to understand
different value streams, regarding their overlapping
nature and use much more needs to be done. That is
why newer classification and application areas are
emerging. The classification scheme suggested by
Hines and Rich (1997) about seven new mapping
tools (namely, process activity mapping, supply-chain
response matrix, production variety funnel, quality.
Filter mapping, demand amplification mapping,
decision point analysis and physical structure
mapping) regarding their major application areas is
very useful. Another scheme of classification for lean
manufacturing tools and allied detailing proposed by
Pavnaskar et al. (2003) is also quite exhaustive.
1.3 FOCUS OF THE STUDY
The study is conducted in a fully government owned
public sector organization,which produces Brushless
alternator and its accessories and brushless DC fans
mainly for Indian Railways.The main components of
the alternators are rotor,stator and end plates etc.My
focus of the study is the manufacturing processes of
rotor production of 4.5 KW alternator which makes
more than 50% of the total production.
1.4CURRENT STATE VALUE STREAM MAP
Value stream mapping is a drawing created using a
predefined set of icons (shown in Figure No.1
below). There are a lot of benefits to draw value
stream maps. Manual mapping lets us see what is
actually happening in a shop floor value stream, rather
than being restrained to a computer. Also, the process
of quickly drawing and redrawing a map acts as a
plan-docheck- act cycle that deepens our
understanding of the overall flow of value or lack
thereof. The first step in value stream mapping is to
choose a product family as the target for
improvement. Customers care only about their
products and not all products so that it is unrealistic to
map everything that passes through the shop floor.
Drawing all of the product flow in one company
would be too complex. Identifying a product family
can be done either by using the product and process
matrix to classify similar process steps for different
products or by choosing products that use the highest
volume after choosing a product family the next step
is to draw a current state map to take a snapshot of information flow is drawn on the upper portion of the
how things are being done now. This is done while map. The information flow is drawn from right to left
walking along the actual pathways from the actual on the map and is connected to the material flow
production process. Drawing material flow on the previously drawn. After the completion of the map a
current state map should always start with the process timeline is drawn below the process boxes to indicate
that is most linked to the customers, which in most the production lead-time, which is the time that a
cases is the shipping department, and then working particular product spends on the shop floor from its
ones way up to the upstream processes. The material arrival until its completion. A second time called the
flow is drawn at the lower portion of the map. At each value- added time is then added. This time represents
process all the critical information including lead- the sum of the processing times for each process.
time, cycle time, inventory levels, etc.are Lead time is calculated by the way each component
documented. The inventory levels on the map should will wait on every machine and then total waiting time
correspond to levels at the time of the actual mapping over the entire process will makes the lead time.
and not the average because it is important to use
actual figures rather than historical averages provided
by the company .The second aspect of the current
state map is the information flow that indicates how
each process will know what to make. The

CURRENT STATE VALUE STREAM MAPPING

MONTHLY ORDERS PRODUCTION ,PLANNINGAND MONTHLY ORDERS

CONTROL

MONTHLY CUSTOMER
DEMAND =140
MONTHLY PRODUCTION
1 SCHEDULE ALTERNATORS /
SUPPLIER AM PRODUCTION MONTH

PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR

DAILY PRODUCTION SCHEDULE

22 PC 7pc 5pc 9 pc
7PC 9pc
20 PC 9 PC
CENTERIN STALKING DY .BALANCING
CUTTING TURNING MILLING GRINDING TURNING INSPECTIO
G &pressing N
CT=53 .3 MIN
CT =160 MIN CT=68MIN CT=53.33 MIN CT= 10 min
CT=21..MIN CT=68.57MIN CT=96MIN
CT=24 MIN U/T=93.75%
U/T=93.75% U/T=93 .75% U/T=93.75% U/T=
U/T=93.75% U/T=93.75% U/T=93.75% CS =2
U/T=93.75%
CS =1 CS=1 CS=1 CS =1
CS=1 CS= 1 CS =1 M/C=1
CS =1
M/C=1 M/C=1 M/C=1
M/C=1 M/C=1 m/c=1 Shift =1
M/C=1
SHIFT =3 SHIFT =1 SHIFT =1 SHIFT =1 SHIFT =1
SHIFT =1 SHIFT =2
SHIFT =1
NVA =4333 .4hrs
7.65 hrs 7.6hrs 21.33hrs 6.85 15.03hrs 6.4hrs 7.11hrs 0.16 hrs

21MIN 24 min 160 min 68.57 68min 96min 53.33min 53.3min 10 min VAT =573 .83MIN

oriented processes is the great scope offered to cut big

amounts of waste and cost from them. Other
Fig No.1 CURRENT STATE VALUE STREAM important factors to identify during the analysis are
MAPPING the variability between good and poor performance in

1.4.1 ANALYSIS OF CURRENT STATE VALUE

STREAM MAPPING
each of the process steps and the time that inventory is
Once a business or manufacturing process is drawn as standing still between steps. Poor inventory speed is
a series of steps and described in numerical terms, the an indicator of too much work-in-progress not
inherent inconsistencies become evident. The first levelled to the bottleneck rate. Variability indicates
analysis performed is to compute a ratio of total inconsistent and uncoordinated practices which need
cycletime which is the sum of value added time and to be streamlined . The good aspect of variability is
non value added time to total process time(value that without spending money improvements are made
added time) to see how customer-effective is the by discovering
process. Often this figure is in the single digits.
what causes the good and the poor performance and
changing practices and procedures to do more of the
good, and less of the poor.
A low customer-value-adding ratio indicates a
process design without the customer’s wishes being Numerous simple statistical techniques are available
considered. The fortunate aspect of non-customer- to analyse the data produced during the investigation.

Table no.1 Results of current state

Scatter plots, Pareto charts, pie diagrams, cause and Hence the current state value stream mapping
effect diagrams and the like are easy tools and exposes the anomalies in the present process and the
methods to apply in analysing data for its hidden bottlenecks of the all process .Hence it will become
information. The problems identified in the process the for the creation of the future state mapping by
are quantified in terms of the costs and customer-non- reducing the non vaue added time and by decreasing
value-adding time they take. By giving a money value the in-process inventories. By improving the uptimes
to the waste and the non-value we have a powerful of the machines. Thereby the whole process can be
improved.For creating future state mapping lean
No Crew No Of In Process principles are adopted. From the current state
Value Of Size Shifts Inventory
Added M/
Non Value mapping it is evident that the so much amount of idle
Operation Added time is due to the lack of continuity in flow of the
Time(Mi C
Time(Min)
n) processes.

Shaft Cutting 21.818 1 1 1 22 15

Centering 24 1 1 1 20 459

Shaft Turning 160 1 1 3 9 456

Shaft Milling 68.57 1 1 1 7 1280

Fig.No2 Comparison of value added time and non
value added time

Shaft Grinding 68 1 1 1 7 411 1.5 FUTURE STATE VALUE STREAM

MAPPING
Stalking And 96 1 1 2 10 901.6 From the current state value stream mapping the total
Pressing
cycle time,total non value added time and value added
Rotor Turning 53.33 1 1 1 9 384 time etc etc. could be identified and calculated and
from this we can improve the process by minimizing
the non value added time and in-process inventory.
Dy.Balancing 53.33 1 2 1 9 426.6 The real power of value stream mapping lies in the
creation of a future state based on Lean concepts. To
do this effectively, there are guidelines that must be
93 followed..Together, the future state embody Lean
Total 545.048 8 9 4333.2
thinking
business motivator to make changes. After incorporating the improvements the future state
mapping has been drawn as follows. In order to
minimize the non value added time between stations
Table No.1 the first and second stations ,fourth and fifth stations
Sixth and seventh stations should be done at the same
From the above table No.1 it is found that Total value time.ie.there will be five work stations..Hence first
added time is545.048 min while the non value added and second operations,fourth and fifth
time is 4333.2 min .This means non value added time operations,sixth and seventh operations will be done
is eight times the value added time. The in-process at the same time so the non value added time in
inventory is 93 .Total manpower is 9 between them will be reduced.
From the above table No.1 the following pie diagram From the future state value stream mapping
is obtained which shows that in the total lead the following results were obtained.
time(Total cycle time) the percentage of VAT and
NVAT .The non value added time is 89 % of the total
cycle time,while value added time is only 11%.
 Fig .No.3 FUTURE
STATE VALUE STREAM
MAPPING.
 reduced.65.59%.After organization lean and 6.Sayed
implementing the future responsive. Whenever there masood.2006.Line
state mapping .Again a is a product for a customer, balancing and
current state mapping can be there is a value stream. The simulation of an
done based on which further challenge lies in working automated production
and implementing it. transfer line,Presented
Non Value Added in
In Process Inventory Time(Min)
Reduction in value
%Red %Red
added time lead to further Assembly Automation ,
Operation
Curren Future Current Future reduction in production lead 26/1 (2006) 69–74
t State State State State time can improve company Emerald Group
Uction Uction
image and customer Publishing Limited .
Cutting 22 3 86.36 15 15 0.00 satisfaction.VSM tool is an
effective tool for Value 7. Bhim Singh, S.K.
Centering 20 19 5.00 459 5 98.91 based management practice. Sharma .2009. Value
stream mapping as a
Turning 9 9 0.00 456 435 4.61 versatile tool for lean
implementation: an
Milling 7 7 0.00 1280 1279.8 0.02
Indian case study of a
Grindng 7 6 14.29 411 5 98.78
manufacturing firm. By
Journal:Measuring
Stalking And 343.2 61.93 Business Excellence.
10 3 70.00 901.6
Pressing Year:2009,Volume:13,I
ssue:3,Page:58 – 68
Turning 9 7 22.22 384 5 98.70
8. Lim Chuan
Dy.Balancin 330.6 22.50 BIBLIOGRAPHY Pei,Masine Md.
9 7 22.22 426.6
g
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