Search results for: value stream mapping

Build an effective Kanban board... There are many ways to create a Kanban board online. For example, you could use the value stream mapping technique by leveraging the mapped activities in your value stream as columns for your board. Over the years, we have refined our approach, and it's now a simple 5 step exercise. The key is to let the team associated with the process follow this exercise. Also, they build their board to keep improving over time. You can also leverage our coaching

Kanban: Continuous Improvement To maintain a competitive advantage, businesses must seek to continuously improve and possibly reinvent their processes. Process Improvement is a proactive and systematic approach to streamlining business processes to improve the quality of outputs, lessen costs, and simplify the work. Your business processes are not meant to be fixed. There will be inevitable changes to the way you do your work. These can be due to the presence of inefficiencies or defects, the advent of new technologies, changing market demands, new

Kanban: Limit Work in Progress (WiP) Have you ever had to accomplish multiple tasks and decided to chip bits and pieces from each one, hoping to complete them all simultaneously? Did you feel like you were not accomplishing anything with this approach? Did it feel like it was taking you longer to complete the tasks? How about that time when you were in the middle of working on a task, and your boss told you, “We have an urgent task you need to work on”?

Stemming from the Toyota Production System, the 3M model - Muda, Mura, Muri - exposes the culprits to inefficient processes that plague business operations. But why do we need to tackle all three of them?The goal of Lean is to deliver increased value to the customer by eliminating wasteful processes. When one talks about waste in this sense, often they refer to the seven wastes in manufacturing or Muda from the 3M model. Mura and Muri are often excluded from the picture but knowing these two

Lean Thinking What is Lean Thinking? Lean Thinking is a business methodology based on the history of Japanese manufacturing techniques which have been applied worldwide within many types of industries. It is ultimately a mindset - a way of viewing the world - that aims to handle work in a Lean manner. Lean puts focus on providing high levels of customer value by continuously improving business processes. The Lean Thinking concept is more than just using tools or changing a few steps in

Introduction to Kanban Software The importance of effective visual management is growing with every passing year. In today’s fast-paced business world, it enables organizations operating in various industries to improve every aspect of their operations. Some benefits of applying visual management include more effective work prioritization, better communication and collaboration within the organization, complete process visibility, and more. Over the past decade, Kanban has become the dominant method for applying visual management. Even organizations that don’t apply Kanban by the book use its most popular

Lean Six Sigma is a fusion of two of the best management techniques - the Lean method and Six Sigma. Applying Lean Six Sigma allows businesses to improve overall efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction. This is achieved by eliminating waste, reducing variation, decreasing defects, and removing non-value adding activities in the process. It allows better quality products and services and faster delivery. But Lean Six Sigma is not a plug-and-play method. More than the process involved, it requires a paradigm shift in business operations. It needs