Business Statistics: Applying Value Stream Mapping

1. What are the sources of value-added and non-value-added work in this process?

2. Where are the main opportunities to improve the cycle time of this process, with respect to both actual time used and the potential best times? What strategy would you use?

3. Step 10: Resolve Open Issues required 104 hours (potential) versus 106 hours (actual). Is there an OFI here? Why or why not? If so, how would you attack it?

4. What do you think are the most difficult critical issues to deal with when designing a sound cycle time study such as this one?

 

1. In order to calculate the non- value added work and value added work, the ratio of potential and actual is calculated in the following table:

 

step	description	actual	potential	Potential / actual
1	Read basic data package	4	4	1
2	Write, type, proof, sign, copy and distribute	21.9	0.5	0.022831
3	queue	40	0	0
4	Lead engineer calls key people to schedule meeting	4	0.25	0.0625
5	Write, type, proof, sign, copy, and distribute conformation letter	25.4	2.1	0.082677
6	Hold meeting	4	4	1
7	Project leader and specialist develop missing information	12	12	1
8	Determine plant preferred vendors	12	12	1
9	Review notes from meeting	12	12	1
10	Resolve open issues	106	104	0.981132
11	Write, type, proof, sign, copy, and distribute basic data acceptance letter	26.5	0.25	0.009434
	total	267.8	151.1	0.564227

Table 1: Ratio of potential and actual

(Source: created by author)

The variables whose ratio of potential and actual are less than one, forms the non – value added work. It is seen that the source of non- value added work in the process are following steps and their respective variables:

steps	description
2	Write, type, proof, sign, copy and distribute
3	queue
4	Lead engineer calls key people to schedule meeting
5	Write, type, proof, sign, copy, and distribute conformation letter
10	Resolve open issues
11	Write, type, proof, sign, copy, and distribute basic data acceptance letter

Table 2: non- value added work in the process

(Source: created by author)

The variables whose ratio of potential and actual are equal to one, forms the value added work. It is seen that the source of value added work in the process are following steps and their respective variables:

steps	reasons
1	Read basic data package
6	Hold meeting
7	Project leader and specialist develop missing information
8	Determine plant preferred vendors
9	Review notes from meeting

Table 3: Value – added work in the process

(Source: created by author)

2. With respect to both actual time and process time, the main opportunities to improve the cycle time of the process involves reducing the time between step one and step 2, step 3, between step 4, step 5 and step 6 and between step 9 and step 10. The strategy that can be used to reduce the cycle time of this process is to cut the time of all the steps involved in this process. All the teams must be must be on track and they must be focused on their work. This is the main key to improve the cycle time of the process.

 

3. There are various opportunities of improvement in this work process. It is seen that there are huge cycle time in the process. This had made the work lengthy and on reducing this cycle time of the work process, there are possibilities of improvement.

The strategies that would be adapted in order to improve the work process involves that the teams must be focused and dedicated in their work. The management must frame rules and regulations, which would provide the teams with opportunities of improvement. It is obvious that there would be overestimation in the work process (Gould et al., 2013). Every team keeps their grace time in the work process and provide the length of their cycle time. The management must keep a track on these over estimating time and cut down the time may be in half. This would reduce the grace time of the teams in their work process. They would work efficiently and would proceed with the work faster. Thus, the strategy of tacking the overestimation in the work process and cutting down the overestimated time of the process would provide opportunities of improvement in the work process.

4. The most difficult issue that would be dealt with in order to design a sound cycle time study like the above case study is the accurate management of both value added work and non-value added work. Adjusting both the value added work and non-value added work would help to reduce the overestimated time of the cycle and provide opportunities of improvement of improvement to every teams of the work process (Teichgräber & de Bucourt, 2012). The management of the work process should frame their policies accordingly and face the challenge of proper management of both value added work and non-value added work. It takes lots of time to appoint for each step of the work process and re-appoint them when needed. This is a challenge that is the most critical issue that would be dealt with to design a sound cycle process.

References

Gould, G. W., Gibb, M., Johnson, J. W., Kubicki, S. A., & Inch, T. M. (2013).U.S. Patent No. 8,345,857. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Teichgräber, U. K., & de Bucourt, M. (2012). Applying value stream mapping techniques to eliminate non-value-added waste for the procurement of endovascular stents. European journal of radiology, 81(1), e47-e52.