Value Stream Mapping 1
Running Head: LEAN PRINCIPLES 1
LEAN PRINCIPLES 2
Lean Principles
Krishna Marepalli
PMGT 574-91
Assignment 3
Introduction
The lean management originated from the manufacturing world more specifically from Toyota's revolution in the sector of manufacturing back in the '80s. Although lean was born in a manufacturing platform, in recent time, lean has transformed the globe of knowledge work as well as management. It greatly encourages the practice of continuous improvement besides building its fundamental code in the fundamental idea of respect for people with the customers’ requirement and taste more especially in the business sector being given the priority. There are five principles associated with lean management which have had greatly brought revolution to the world in recent times. This paper will illustrate how these five lean principles should be implemented in the Illinois State Families and Children Department for efficiency in service delivery (Hicks, McGovern, Prior, & Smith, 2015).
Principles Applied
Although the lean principles have been applied in the Illinois State Families and Children Department, for quite some time now, they have not been effectively exploited since from the main challenges that are being experienced in the Illinois State Families and Children Department; a new person to the organization may suggest that those principles aren't being applied in the organization. This is because the kind of challenges being faced in the Illinois State Families and Children Department can be eliminated by effective utilization of lean principles more specifically in the management section. The five lean principles, in this case, include value definition; value stream mapping, flow creating, pull system utilization, as well as perfection, pursue (Yang et al. 2015).
Value Definition
Value is actually what the customer is willing to pay for; this is from a business point of view. This means that it's much important to identify the exact or even the hidden requirements of the customer since at times the customers might not be in a position of knowing what they specifically want or maybe know what they want but the real articulation of their desires happens to be a challenge. For instance, in the Illinois State Families and Children Department, there is the adoption of waterfall methodology which was followed by what can be termed as unworthy challenges for an organization that is making use of the lean principles. For instance, the organization isn't identifying or rather defining the customer value in the waterfall methodology, and that is why customers had to wait for longer times for the reports to be released since they were rolled out in large amounts. In this case, it has to be noted that the customer value, in this case, is not to roll the reports in a large amount, but the time value. Specifically, by making use of value definition principle, the organization is supposed to roll the reasonable amount of reports whose customers are readily available for saving the customers' time (Jasti, & Kodali, 2016).
Value Stream Mapping
This is the second lean principle which makes use of customer’s value as a reference point towards the identification of all the actions which leads to the valuation of the customer. From this principle, all the activities which don't add value to the receiving end customer are considered as a waste. As per the Illinois State Families and Children Department, this principle can be applied in the number of files the customers handle to access the data or domains that they want. The large documentation of tasks is a waste both in the organization's resources as well as the time of the customers. By making use of Value Stream Mapping, the organization can rethink of adopting the use of technology in documentation as well as handling of data by the customers. This will specifically ensure that all the large documentation of tasks is broken down into small bulk beside the number of files to be handled are greatly reduced. This will save the customers’ time at the same time saving the organization resources from going into a waste (Azadeh, Yazdanparast, Zadeh, & Zadeh, 2017).
Flow Creating
The mapping, as well as value streaming, entails the removal of wastes from the system to remain with only the valuable activities which are beneficial to the customers. The flow of creating a lean principle comes in to ensure that these valuable activities are smoothly running without any disturbance. To ensure that there will be a smooth flow of these activities, departmental tasks for instance in the Illinois State Families and Children Department, is necessary. This will greatly reduce the accumulation of tasks under one desk (Zhou, 2016). The training of the Illinois State Families and Children Department employees to be multi-skilled as well as adoptive will also help in increasing the efficiency of service delivery since any employee can attend the customers adequately without necessarily having to depend on only one or two individuals to perform certain tasks in the whole department. Also, this will help in doing away with instances of inadequate testing of the data warehouse project which lead to misunderstandings. With many multi-skilled employees, the testing process can be taken as a group work hence achieving the results as per the requirements (Orzen, & Bell, 2016).
Pull System Utilization
This is the fourth lean principle which is mandated at regulating the stock in the organization at the same time ensuring that there are adequate raw materials for the continuous production process. This acknowledges the just in time delivery mechanism. In the Illinois State Families and Children Department, this principle can be utilized to allow for instant picking of reports by the customers. This can be achieved through the regulation of the number of reports being rolled in the organization as well as reducing the documentation bulk (Mrugalska, & Wyrwicka, 2017).
Perfection Pursue
This is the last lean principle that can be utilized in the Illinois State Families and Children Department. It should be appreciated that this is the most important principle which must be adhered to if lean management has to have an impact on the organization. The other four principles more specifically deal with wasted elimination from the process, but perfection pursue principle will ensure that lean thinking, as well as the continuous process that is aimed at improvement, is part and parcel of the Illinois State Families and Children Department. Therefore, this principle brings about persistence to lean management (Jasti, & Kodali, 2015).
Waste can be easily defined as anything that doesn’t add value to a process or a production in the case of business and trade. In trade therefore, clients are not really appealed to the scenario where they are forced to pay for things that are not valuable or desirable them hence such should be eliminated from the production line (Jasti et al, 2015). A good example of waste is the scenario of a customer walking into a restaurant and after being served a meal they didn’t order they are required to incur the costs of the meal. Contrary to this practice in one on one trade deals in the case of production it is common practice for end users to be required to pay for additions to their purchases that they do not desire. These additions to the production process although occur in various forms ranging from machine operators sitting idle waiting for the production line to meet the requirements for them to contribute to the production to redoing of a certain task because of the errors that might have occurred in the first instance of the production process. Long term storage of produced products in stores which charge according to the storage are as well causes of these costs that are added to the end value of the product (Rafique et al, 2019).
It is thus essential as seen from the discussions above that these unnecessary costs ought to be taken out of the production process or if not possible at least reduced to the achievable levels (Hawash et al, 2017). Different approaches to the perception of the prices of commodities may indicate different contributors but the market trends are an unavoidable player in the market prices of the commodity (Satoglu et al, 2018). Since the profit of any organization is the price of the commodity minus the production cost it is thus essential to realize that the production cost is the only factor that can be influenced by the manufacturer and has a direct impact on the profitability of the organization. It is thus essential for any san manufacturer to try as hard as they can to reductively influence the cost of production as this would go a long way in influencing the profitability positively. Another factor of consideration in analyzing the factors that influence profitability is the consideration of the different perceptions that customers build towards the cost of products in the live market (Abreu et al, 2017). For instance, if a producer increases the costs of the product too much, then the buyers would definitely switch to a cheaper option hence reduce sales and subsequently reduce the profit margins. In the other case in a producer or service provider reduces the costs too much the customers start to build a notion that the products or services being offered by this specific producer do not meet the production standards and could be faulty. In this case as well the customers would switch to other options having the same reductive impact on the sales and resultingly dropping profitability. It is thus unanimously agreeable that the only and most influential factor of profitability is the cost of production as the market prices are relatively deterministic and not alterable.
The desirable influence of the producer on the production cost should be targeted at reducing the costs and this can only be done through the elimination or relative mitigation of wastes that are existent in the production line. The efforts of achieving this goal is through the appropriate planning as well as requisite execution process to achieve optimal results. The improvements done through these eliminations hence have various impacts such as optimization of the production process through which both customer and employee satisfaction can be achieved which is obviously a desirable outcome for all producers and service providers (Perini et al, 2016).
The production wastes exist in various forms which are highly variable as well as deterministic of the production line of the organization as well as the operational environment. The waste of transportation usually involves organizations in which products are moved around within the production plant during the process of production before the raw materials are completely converted into a finished product which is thus ready for shipping out to the various customers.
The waste of inventory exists in the form of all the expenses that the producer incurs during the period which the final products is being prepared. During this period the product may exist in the form of raw materials as well as a product at a certain stage of production before it is actually finished and the shipment done such that the product is no longer under the care of the producer. In a production line there may exist movements which involve the production of the product as well as the employees who are actually executing the production process. During this motion, costs are incurred as a result and these costs in some production systems if optimally designed can be gotten rid of and hence mitigate waste (Monica, 2015). Waiting waste involves the halt of a process of production since the necessary requirements for the execution of this particular action of production is dependent upon another action of production which isn’t complete yet.
The costs of overproduction happen in the instance whereby products that are availed are either not required at the time of not required at all hence rendering them an unnecessary strain the production line. These instances are brought about by various factors which may as well be influenced by the interaction of the supplier with the production hence actions delayed which should be accurately coordinated. The over process waste is a result if misappropriation of production techniques as well as the use of inefficient production equipment. Over processing occurs in events which require accurate scheduling hence makes it a bit harder to obtain necessary accuracy in the production (Chahal et al, 2017). In a production line if the end products do not meet the intended production parameters, the variations are regarded as defects and thus need repairs to be executed and these modifications usually require production resources which would have been avoided in the absence of a defect thus classified as waste. These seven wastes of production thus have a detrimental effect on the smooth delivery that is desirable in all organizations through unnecessary delays as well as cause of further inconveniences in production.
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