VALUE STREAM MAPPING - PLAN A STRONG
BUT SUSTAINABLE PERFORMANCE BOOST

Your people are going around and around your operations, chasing solutions to reduce costs and improve performances, but they are not achieving the targets.

They try a lot of little stuff here and there, a lot of fluff, and sometimes they are convinced that only by spending millions they can get the improvements the operations are craving.

So the time pass, money is spent, results are not coming, and the plant goes into jeopardy.

What's wrong?

Usually: too many voices, some louder than others, no commonsense, no industrial philosophy, and, first of all, no genuine willingness to challenge the existing set-up.

They are locked in their box of misleading perceptions.

IT'S THEIR PERCEPTIONS AND BEHAVIORS

Many managers and middle managers usually do not know too much about what it means to manage operations with a lean thinking approach. They never had management teachings. At the university, no professor teaches how to manage; they teach the what but seldom the how; however, no professor is usually qualified.

Managers don't know that they have to visit their processes with a clinical eye regularly; when they do what we call a Gemba walk, it's only for a few minutes because they have another urgent meeting.

They think to understand problems and lead their people through charts and reports interpretation, but these bring to:

• Misunderstanding: the whole puzzle, the problems, and the possibles solutions
• Loss of the right angle to interpret the reality of the operations

These two points explain the causes for missing the targeted performance but not the root cause.

The root cause is that they don't have a consistent management approach of any type, so they start the day in a random mode, funneled by many pre-scheduled meetings in which they speak about the data, but they don't work on them.

YOUR PEOPLE ALONE CAN'T GET THE BEST IMPROVEMENTS IDEAS

When they look at the operations to find improvements ideas, they do this with all their biases, and they could be related to:

• Their working experience in that industrial field
• Their experience with that specific process
• Their theoretical knowledge acquired at university or other teaching institutions
• Their thoughts influenced by coworkers, managers, and gossip
• Their good or bad opinions about other collaborators.

Considering that everybody involved in analyzing possible improvements could have their own biases, it's easy to understand that finding shared improvement solutions and a shared transformation plan is challenging.

Biases VEIL the REALITY and block the arising ideas of the best possible improvements.

Getting through the biases needs two primary resources: an authentic kaizen coach and an industrial management philosophy of reference.

Why do you need a "true" kaizen coach to overcome biases?

Working on a transformation plan that will improve the operation's performance needs teamwork. When you have a group of participants to make them in high productivity mode, it's necessary to transform them into a TEAM.

Holding together a group of participants with their own biases and transforming them into a Team capable of getting out a transformation plan requires a skilled person.

Usually, this is the mission of an experienced kaizen coach.

Why a kaizen coach and not a regular coach? Because in the case of an industrial transformation plan, it's also necessary to mold the team around the same management philosophy. The best-confirmed management philosophy today is lean thinking.

The kaizen coach is a certified change agent skilled in lean manufacturing & kaizen philosophy.

A kaizen coach integrates all the following skills:

• Consultant
• Coach
• Trainer
• Professional experience
• Mentor

A kaizen coach is all this together!

ARE YOU DRIVING OPERATIONS WITH LIGHTS OFF?

To understand why operations are missing their targets, we can use the metaphor of driving with lights off on a very dark night.

The managers and their collaborators improve with many concerns and are very slow. Every time a shadow or a un uncertain form appears in the distance, they struggle to decide if to keep the speed, cruise, steer, slow down, or eventually stop to get out of the car for a better understanding.

The above-outlined situation results from not having a clear vision about managing and improving operations, and this is a consequence of a lack of management philosophy.

LACK OF MANAGEMENT PHILOSOPHY

FORD, TAYLOR, DEMING, OHNO, TOYODA, WELCH, JOBS, BEZOS, etc.

They had great management results because of their companies' management schools and their people's integration of consequent congruent behaviors.

Have you ever thought to ask your managers and middle managers which methods they use to improve quality, productivity, and delivery? They will stare at you, there will be long seconds for a pause of reflection, and you will see that the question destabilizes them, and in most cases, no answers will arise.

Many don't have a recognized driving management philosophy upon which to act; they only have the uncharted personal experience they are trying to feed their collaborators.

CAN YOU IMAGINE DRIVING OPERATIONS WITH LIGHTS ON?

DO YOUR MANAGERS HAVE A PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT PLAN?

When there is a lack of management philosophy, getting a meaningful performance improvement plan is impossible.

A plan that brings results is sound in all its components when it is developed and accepted by managers that share the same points of perceptions and management philosophy.

A good plan benefits the whole system and aligns all the different parts of the supply chain because developed by a representative team that works it out with a teamwork spirit.

Today teamwork is a fundamental management component, we are no anymore in the command and control era, and managers have to learn and apply the teambuilding methods.

THE LEAN MANAGEMENT PHILOSOPHY VS THE SELF-MADE ONE

Some time ago, a manager told me he doesn't like the lean thinking philosophy; he prefers his way of managing.

This kind of affirmation reveals that he doesn't know lean thinking. (by the way, he is also a certified lean black belt)

Maybe he studied it but did not understand it, so he prefers to utilize his random self-made management method, which often translates into a daily work schedule of chaos and fuzziness.

Very often, this also translates into a kind of tribal style management, where facts do not count too much, but what instead count is the leader's adoration and belonging to the leader's circle.

This kind of leader cannot stand lean thinking because lean is based first on principles and concepts and, after this, on people's participation in the process improvements. It is the opposite of his way of doing things.

Lean philosophy starts from a very rigorous and different way of perceiving the workplace; here, below, you find a typical sequence of reasonings when you look at processes with the value stream mapping methodology well ingrained in mind:

1. Distinguish the value-added activities from the non-value-added activities
2. Believe that all the non-value-added activities are waste
3. Understand which type of waste is affecting your processes
4. Quantify each kind of waste plaguing your processes
5. Decide which waste you are going to tackle first
6. Chose the correct lean methodology to reduce or eliminate the waste
7. Take the actions to eliminate or reduce the waste
8. Measure the results
9. Tweak and standardize the changes
10. Stabilize processes and results

When people learn and integrate lean principles and concepts into their muscles, thinking differently and developing coherent lean reasoning sequences becomes a natural output. You have to consider that the effect is much more extensive when an entire group of people does this, and when it happens, you can say that the whole company culture is changed.

But what are the lean principles and concepts that are necessary to learn?

These below are mandatory:

You can understand that a precise mindset helps to read what is happening in the operations very differently. From a mindset like this, it becomes very natural to elaborate an improvement performance action plan, and you can prepare it with the help of the value stream mapping methodology.

THESE ARE THE REASONS CURRENTLY HOLDING BACK YOUR OPERATIONS FROM GETTING THE MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT:

1. Management is lacking in lean management philosophy
2. Be trapped in your own industrial perception biases
3. No methodology in planning operations performance improvement

Based on these missing points, we created a NEW PROGRAM based on the Value Stream Mapping methodology that efficiently combines all the best of our lean knowledge so that our KAIZEN COACHES can run it with your people with a 100% success rate in your company.  

We call it:

"VSM 4 MAX PERFORMANCE"

In this program, we will teach and assist you in achieving a double-digit performance improvement through value stream mapping and other lean methods.

These are the benefits of this workshop program:

• Double digits performance improvement
• Maximize your industrial capacity
• Maintain/Improve quality
• Improve customer service level
• Raise your managers' capabilities
• Huge costs reduction

Fill out the information request here below,
and we will send you for FREE! all the information about the program

YES! I Want To Receive More Information about the VSM 4 MAX PERFORMANCE program