Learning to See: Unveiling Value Streams and Dorothea Lange's Vision

This article explores two seemingly disparate topics: value stream mapping (VSM) as a lean manufacturing tool and the historical novel "Learning to See" about the life of documentary photographer Dorothea Lange. By examining both, we can gain a deeper understanding of process optimization and the power of visual storytelling.

Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Journey Through History

"Learning to See" by Elise Hooper is a historical novel centered around the life of Dorothea Lange, a pioneering documentary photographer. The novel aims to humanize a figure known for her iconic photographs, offering a glimpse into her eventful life. The book has garnered praise for its ability to weave together the time, places, and people in Lange’s life seamlessly.

Critical Acclaim

The novel has been well-received, with reviewers highlighting its immersive nature and compelling portrayal of Lange. Critics have noted that reading the book feels like discovering the secret backstory of someone they thought they knew. The novel offers plenty for book clubs to discuss about work-life balance. It is described as a page-turner that allows readers to live through much of the 20th century with Dorothea Lange. The author does an admirable job at condensing decades and careers into an immensely entertaining novel.

A Timely View of America

"Learning to See" is described as a powerful and timely view of America told through the lens of Dorothea Lange. It highlights an important period in American history. The novel grips the reader and shines a light on the nation’s forgotten and abandoned.

Value Stream Mapping: A Lean Tool for Eliminating Waste

Value stream mapping (VSM) is a lean manufacturing technique used to visualize, analyze, and improve the steps required to deliver a product or service. It helps organizations identify and eliminate waste, optimize processes, and create more efficient value streams.

The Essence of Value Stream Mapping

VSM involves diagramming every step involved in the material and information flows needed to bring a product from order to delivery. It is a fundamental tool used in continuous improvement to identify and eliminate waste. Value stream mapping typically begins with a team creating a current state map. This means capturing the actual condition of a value stream’s material and information flow. Subsequently, the team draws a future state map.

Key Concepts in Value Stream Mapping

Several key concepts are central to VSM:

Takt Time: This refers to how often you should produce one part or product based on the rate of sales. Consequently, it is a proxy for customer demand.
Continuous Flow: This refers to producing one piece at a time. There are often spots in the value stream where continuous flow is not possible and batching is necessary. Resist the temptation to schedule these process via an independent scheduling function.
Pacemaker Process: By using supermarket pull systems, you will typically need to schedule only one point in the value stream. This point is called the pacemaker process. This is because how you control production at this process sets the pace of production for all upstream processes. Most assembly departments probably find it easier to schedule long runs of one product type and avoid changeovers.

Read also: Comprehensive Deep Learning Guide
Level Production: Establishing a consistent, level production pace creates a predictable production flow. Consequently, this allows management to see problems more easily and take corrective action faster.
Paced Withdrawal: A good place to start is to regularly release only a small, consistent amount of production instruction (usually between 5-60 minutes worth) at the pacemaker process and simultaneously take away an equal amount of finished goods. We call this practice a paced withdrawal.
Pitch: We calculate the pitch based on the packout quantity (the number of parts one finished-goods container holds) or a multiple or fraction of that quantity. For example, if your takt time is 30 seconds and your pack size is 20 pieces, then your pitch is ten minutes (30 seconds x 20 pieces = 600 seconds or 10 minutes). In other words, every 10 minutes: a) give the pacemaker process instruction to produce one pack quantity and b) take away one finished pitch quantity.
Process Boxes: These represent the steps of product or service delivery in a value stream. Because drawing a box for every process step would make the map unwieldy, use the process box to indicate one area of material flow.
Cycle Time (C/T): The time it takes an operator to go through all of her work elements before repeating them.

Read also: Unlocking Scholarship Opportunities
Lead Time (L/T): The time is takes one piece to move all the way through a process or a value stream from start to finish.
Uptime: The percent of time a machine is available for production
Changeover Time (C/O): The amount of time required to setup a machine to make a different product or part number.
% Complete and Accurate (%C/A): The percent of product completed with perfect quality in a process step.
Availability: The amount of time a process operates over a single shift. This is often measured in seconds.

Benefits of Value Stream Mapping

VSM offers several benefits:

Visualization: It helps you visualize more than just the single-process level. You can see the flow.
Waste Identification: It helps you see more than waste. Mapping helps you see the sources of waste in your value stream.
Common Language: It provides a common language for talking about a process.
Decision Making: It makes the decisions about flow apparent, so you can discuss them. Otherwise, many decisions and details just happen by default.
Implementation Plan: It forms the basis of an implementation plan. By helping you design how the whole “door-to-door” flow should operate, value-stream maps become a blueprint for lean implementation. Imagine trying to build a house without a blueprint!
Linkage: It shows the linkage between material flow and information flow.

Taking a Value Stream Perspective

Taking a value-stream perspective means working on the big picture and not just individual processes. The value-stream map is a paper-and-pencil representation of every process in the material and information flow, along with key data. It differs significantly from tools such as process mapping or layout diagrams because it includes information flow as well as material flow.

Learning to See: The Workbook

To encourage you to become actively involved in the learning process, Learning to See contains a case study based on a fictional company, Acme Stamping. You begin by mapping the current state of the value stream, looking for all the sources of waste. Written by two experts with practical experience, Mike Rother and John Shook, the workbook makes complicated concepts simple. With this easy-to-use product, a company gets the tool it needs to understand and use value-stream mapping so it can eliminate waste in production processes.

The Authors: Rother and Shook

Mike is co-author of two groundbreaking LEI workbooks, Learning to See: value-stream mapping to add value and eliminate muda, which received a Shingo Research Award in 1999 and Creating Continuous Flow: an action guide for managers, engineers and production associates, which received a Shingo Award in 2003. Mike is an engineer, researcher, and teacher on the subjects of management, leadership, improvement, adaptiveness, and change in human organizations. His affiliations have included the Industrial Technology Institute in Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan College of Engineering, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation, Stuttgart, and the Technical University Dortmund. John Shook became Toyota’s first American kacho (manager) in Japan and was senior American manager with the Toyota Supplier Support Center in Lexington, Kentucky, assisting North American companies to adopt the Toyota Production System.

Lean Principles and Value Stream Mapping

Lean production is the gold standard in production systems, but has proven famously difficult to implement in North America. Mass production relies on large inventories, uses “push” processes and struggles with long lead times. Moving towards a system that eliminates muda (“waste”) caused by overproduction, while challenging, proves necessary for improved efficiency. Often overlooked, value stream mapping is the essential planning stage for any Lean transformation.

The Importance of Preparation

Lean thinking has a “Just do it!” ethic, in the spirit of Taiichi Ohno and his Toyota colleagues, that inspires managers to adopt the now-famous Toyota Production System. Some companies eliminated preparatory work and jumped into “muda elimination activities,” costing valuable time and resources, to little effect. Eliminating waste in one area but ignoring other areas does not improve overall production. Too often, managers become frustrated and give up.

Gaining a Value Stream Perspective

To integrate Lean into your processes, gain a value stream perspective. The first “tool kit” project of the Lean Enterprise Institute is the value stream map. This map allows you to identify every process on your shop floor. This “door-to-door” approach may seem daunting, but you needn’t improve everything at once. Starting with the whole, isolate the parts - or “loops” - that need improving. Start with a product family to simplify the map.

The Pioneers of Value Stream Mapping

Mike Rother introduced the widespread business practices of Value Stream Mapping and Toyota Kata (Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata).

tags: #book #learning #to #see #summary