It's not the Map that Counts
Congratulations. You’ve mapped out the future state. Now what? |
TimeBack Management
Here’s a post, linked above, from a good friend of the Lean Blog,
Dan Markovitz.
“After you map the current state, you create a “future
state” map that depicts the improvements to that value stream. And
this is where things go awry. The
people who have so laboriously mapped out the new direction don’t
have the time to actually make the changes. They barely have
enough time to do all of their regular work, to say nothing of the
extra work involved in making the lean transformation. So the
future state map is only partially implemented, the 30-, 60-, and
90-day milestones go unmet, and everyone is left muttering, “Yeah,
that was kind of a cool project, but it didn’t really make much of
a difference in how we do stuff. Everyone’s personnel evaluations
are still six weeks late.”
I agree with Dan. I’d go further and suggest that if you don’t have
a plan for how you’re going to implement changes identified in the
VSM activity, then don’t even bother. There’s little value in the
map itself if you’re not using it to drive improvement.
This is a frequent Catch-22 in organizations, including
hospitals:
- We know we need to get better, but
- We don’t have time to make improvements
- So that makes things worse…
And the cycle continues. Sometimes you have to “bite the bullet”
and invest some of your people’s time to kick off initial Lean
improvements. You have to jump start the process. Some
organizations will actually approve overtime in the short-term to
create some time for initial activities. Once improvements are
underway, time freed up by efficiency improvements and quality
improvements (reduced inspection and rework time) should free up
time for more improvement and a “virtuous cycle” can began, where
improvements lead to more improvements.
Do you have any tips for managers? How do you free up your own time
for kaizen activities, after a Value Stream Mapping exercise or
otherwise? How do you free up your employees’ time to encourage
kaizen?
shyam commented:
Many times, implementing a future state map requires the buy in and
investment of time from multiple parties at different levels of
management. Here is where the unambiguous commitment from the
management is critical in the success of converting a map from
'paper' to the 'floor'. This is consistent with the charatcter of a
typical Lean implementation which requires substantial investment
in awareness and education of the masses, and which proves a
challenge for many organisations. As Muthu rightly pointed out
before me it invariably falls on the 'champion' to bail the
initiative out. Another point in the article that makes sense is
that it might be good for the top management (once convinced) to
allocate dedicated resources for lean implementation, rather than
on an ad hoc basis. This will ensure accountability and focus.
Muthuvelan ST commented:
Great title "It's not the Map that Counts". I believe this happens
partly because lean teams expect "magic" to happen. Everyone should
realize that any initiative goes through a "Hype Cycle". It is very
important for someone in the team (champion) to pull it thorugh the
"lull" period and reach the escape velocity -otherwise it will fall
back!!
