Improve your project management with Value Stream Mapping

Before a product you manufacture reaches its end client, there are a thousand and one steps to go through. Some are high value-added, others less so. With the Value Stream Mapping template, you can itemize them as a team and identify what needs to be deleted, amended and optimized.

This lean management method means you can carry out a strategic analysis of every step involved in manufacturing a product, from its initial state to its final state. This mapping helps you easily visualize the manufacturing journey from supplier to customer.

The goal? In a team meeting, get better results, faster and at lower cost, all in a safer working environment.

How to use this flow mapping to optimize your production process

With the Value Stream Mapping template, get a simple view of a complex process by identifying high or low value-added tasks and increase productivity.

Using the tools and visual symbols of the Klaxoon whiteboard, your entire team can use your logistics flow mapping, clearly display completion times and ultimately optimize production cycles.

Project management becomes more efficient because you uncover tasks that are not compliant or not aligned with production or delivery times, and gradually reduce low-value steps.

Using the Klaxoon template for your Value Stream Mapping

Once you have your Value Stream Mapping template, add details of your process in the space provided for this purpose. Then, check with your team that all members are clear about the scope of this process, i.e. everything that is included, using the interactive Question tool.

Then, give yourself enough time to map the data. The meeting can begin with a review of the different symbols and connectors that can be used to do this. Use the toolbox on the left, the color coded key and the different symbols that can be copied to fill in the information flow, time scale and flowchart for the process. Red ideas represent controls and purple ideas the supplier or client and shipments of raw materials to/from the latter.

Remember that participants on the Value Stream Mapping Board can customize icons however they want by copying them, adding text underneath and changing colors. Use the connection symbols (arrow for "push", "pull" etc.) to adapt their size and shape to suit your flow mapping. Now all you have to do is fill in all the steps of the defined process by adding general information (teams for example) to the spaces for this purpose and additional attributes. The Klaxoon template has three pre-defined criteria in dimensions but you can define your own if you want.

Don’t forget to fill in the time scale by completing the waiting time between each step. This is a vital aspect of lean VSM. Remember to always use the same unit of time!

Then, decide with the team how to organize your data (alignment, connectors etc.), and check that it is approved by everyone. Use a Poll question for this. You can also download your Value Stream Mapping data as a spreadsheet in .csv format, if need be.

Now, it's time for assessment. In the Retrospective section, ask your team to double-click on the “Your feedback” box to answer the 5-point evaluation question. Then, to end this workshop, ask them to answer the question about Areas of improvement. The automatically created word cloud will help you visualize the low value-added steps and define the next steps as appropriate. This is how you improve project management with the help of all the teams involved in your process!