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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Karen Martin
Read between
February 17 - February 19, 2022
After introductions, the executive sponsor should address the team—in person, if possible—to reiterate the business drivers for improving the value stream, his or her expectations for the mapping activity, and his or her faith in the team to achieve the measurable conditions outlined in the charter.
Either the executive sponsor or the value stream champion should also review the charter with the team once again so that the team is clear about the scope and its mission.
Having the executive sponsor or value stream champion review the charter during the kickoff also serves as a clear message that the charter is the team’s, not the facilitator’s,
At this point, the executive sponsor and/or value stream champion turns the activity over to the facilitator, who, after a brief introduction, reviews a notional agenda for the activity, and seeks consensus around the “rules of engagement”
During the first walk, the mapping team begins determining how it will depict the value stream in terms of process blocks.
The first value stream walk focuses on obtaining the most basic information you need for understanding the current state: the sequence of processes that connect together to form the value stream, and the functions that perform the work.
At this stage, team members collect information that will help them determine how to construct the map—which process blocks will be on the map and in what order. Though they are not yet collecting metrics or identifying barriers to flow, the team should gain clarity about what inputs the worker receives, where they come from, who they pass work on to, and if the work stops at any point.
During the value stream walks, the facilitator may need to slow the team down so that members gain the deep understanding that’s needed to create a robust future state and break their habit of prematurely jumping to solutions.
Once the team returns to base camp, members begin building a rudimentary view of the value stream
The team focuses on the basics—what is done, who does it, and in what order—upon which they’ll layer in details down the road.
Once the team members agree on the process blocks, they write a description of the activities in the fewest words possible and in verb-plus-noun format (e.g., test specimen, interview candidates, enter order, create drawing) and the functions that perform them
The second walk will focus on collecting relevant information and data to assess current value stream performance and discover both problems and opportunities for improvement.
The purpose of the second value stream walk is for the team to gain a deeper understanding about how the value stream currently performs and identify significant barriers to flow.
The team needs to understand the speed at which work progresses from process to process, the hands-on work effort required, and the quality of the process output that moves through the value stream.
three metrics to evaluate the current state of 98 percent of the office and service value streams we’ve encountered: process time (PT), lead time (LT), and percent complete and accurate (%C&A).
Process time (PT)—also referred to as processing time, touch time, work time, and task time*—is the time it takes people to complete the process tasks to transform an input into an output for one unit of work.
Typically expressed in minutes or hours, process time represents the hands-on “touch time” to do the work. It also includes “talk time” that may be regularly required to clarify or obtain additional information related to a task (including meetings), as well as “read and think time” if the process involves review or analysis.
Process time does not include waiting or delays.
When process times vary widely even within a narrow set of conditions, opt for the median rather than the mean so that the measurement more accurately reflects what typically happens.
Process time reflects human effort (and, sometimes, equipment time) and, in the current state, consists of both value-adding and non-value-adding effort. Value-adding effort is work that your external customer values and is willing to pay for—or that’s a requirement of doing business with the customer. All other expenses and effort are non-value-adding. However, there are two types of non-value-adding work: necessary and unnecessary.
Lead time (LT)— also referred to as throughput time, response time, and turnaround time—is the elapsed time from the moment work is made available to an individual, work team, or department until it has been completed and made available to the next person or team in the value stream.
lead time includes queue time and delays plus process time.
percent complete and accurate (%C&A) is the most transformational metric we’ve encountered.* It reflects the quality of each process’s output. The %C&A is obtained by asking downstream customers what percentage of the time they receive work that’s “usable as is,” meaning that they can do their work without having to correct the information that was provided, add missing information that should have been supplied, or clarify information that should have and could have been clearer.
Barriers to flow are any actions or conditions that inhibits the uninterrupted progression of work.
Work is often batched in office and service environments,
There are two primary types of batches: (1) batch size—holding work until a specific number of items have accumulated (e.g., entering orders once 10 have been received), and (2) batch frequency—performing an activity at a specific time of day, week, or month (e.g., nightly system downloads).
In some environments, excessive system downtime and/or slow responsiveness present a significant barrier to flow and should be noted.
If those responsible for performing the work have multiple obligations and priorities that make them unavailable to do the work as soon as it arrives, this may present a significant barrier to flow. If staff is unavailable or inaccessible for other reasons (e.g., significant travel, medical leave), this, too, should be noted. When relevant, it’s helpful to show the percentage of time staff is typically available to perform the process when the work arrives.
In office and service, switch-tasking and coping with chronic interruptions reveals potential barriers to flow,
During the value stream walk, it’s helpful to ask how people prioritize their work to discover differing and/or conflicting rules that may exist, either formally or informally.
Work-in-process is the accumulation of work between or within processes.
(1) work that’s in queue but hasn’t been started yet, (2) work that’s being processed but hasn’t been completed, (3) work that’s been completed but hasn’t been passed on to the next process in the value stream. To gain greater insights into the current state, the team should also make note of the oldest item in the queue.
We often include the number of people who currently perform the work
In some cases, it’s relevant to include not only how many people regularly do the work, but how many are trained and capable of doing the work.
In some environments, it’s helpful to know the percentage of upstream work that successfully converts into downstream work.
The mapping team should note how people know to do work.
Understanding how information flows across the value stream is an important part of making substantive changes to the value stream.
the team needs to identify the systems and applications that each process in the value stream interfaces with,
Value stream mapping is an effective vehicle for visually demonstrating the technology-related disconnects, voids, and redundancies that exist in many value streams.
The next step in creating a current state value stream map is creating the timeline that demonstrates the degree of flow present, the speed at which your organization delivers goods or services to the customer, and the amount of work effort involved across the value stream.
Next, the team will summarize the metrics across the full value stream.
Total Labor Process Time This value reflects the collective work effort required by all functions involved in the value stream and is used to calculate capacity gains due to reduced process time in the future state design.
Total Labor Effort This calculation reflects the total human effort (annualized) that’s required to perform the work within the scope of the value stream being mapped. It’s calculated by multiplying the total labor process time by the number of times the value stream processes customer requests each year.
In summary, creating the current state value stream map should be viewed as a discovery activity.
From a macro perspective, there are three overall considerations to address when designing the future state: determining the work that should be done, making that work flow, and managing the work to achieve continuously improved performance.
We begin with determining the “right work”: which processes and steps are required for the value stream to operate optimally?
the work should be designed to eliminate delays, improve quality, and reduce unnecessary cost, labor effort, and frustration.
Embracing value stream thinking is a mark of an organization that has successfully shifted from siloed thinking (what’s best for me and my team?) to holistic thinking (what’s best for the customer and the company?).
When you remove work effort from a value stream—assuming that the removal doesn’t create a need for new work that takes even more effort to accomplish—you remove operational cost.
Activities should be removed when it is determined that they are truly unnecessary.
