Transforming Your Value Streams 15 - 16: Transactional Detailed Process Mapping

Thoughts from watching Gemba Academy's Transforming Your Value Streams videos 15 and 16: Transactional Detailed Process Mapping:

I really liked these extra videos at the end as they covered value streams that were much closer to what I normally deal with and a very deliberate visual style (colour coding, shapes) was suggested.


The most valuable thing is simply getting people together.  I've observed the same pattern.  Many organisations do not talk across silos which means someone may not have any idea that something they could easily change is causing major problems for someone else.

Describe the value-added only value stream first, and then measure the actual time.  This gives you a way to check whether you've covered all the extra non-value adding activities in the current state.  This is a neat trick that I will try.

We also discussed a few questions:

• Is "necessary waste" worth discussing at the start or is it just contributing to confusion?  I wonder if describing it as customer value-adding vs administrative (internal business needs) is clearer.  At some point, we start to get a lot more creative about what is actually necessary to achieve a customer outcome which may be more fundamental re-designs of the process so is it really useful to worry too much about the details of necessary vs unnecessary wastes?
• What is Lean? and How do you sell it?  I generally like Kenji's definition ("Think for yourself in your context") but the question also reminds me of having people remember paragraphs rather than use the term "Agile".  In terms of selling, my thought is that you shouldn't sell Lean but rather start with the problems that the person is facing and sell a solution to those problems instead.