Learning to See: Value Stream Mapping to Add Value and Eliminate MUDA [Spiral-bound]

Mike Rother (Author), John Shook (Author), Jim Womack (Foreword), Dan Jones (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0966784308 | ISBN-13: 978-0966784305 | Edition: Version 1.4 October 2009

Much more important, these simple maps - often drawn on scrap paper - showed where steps could be eliminated, flows smoothed, and pull systems introduced in order to create a truly lean value stream for each product family.

In 1998 John teamed with Mike Rother of the University of Michigan to write down Toyota's mapping methodology for the first time in Learning to See. This simple tool makes it possible for you to see through the clutter of a complex plant. You'll soon be able to identify all of the processing steps along the path from raw materials to finished goods for each product and all of the information flows going back from the customer through the plant and upstream to suppliers. With this knowledge in hand it is much easier to envision a "future state" for each product family in which wasteful actions are eliminated and production can be pulled smoothly ahead by the customer.

In plain language and with detailed drawings, this workbook explains everything you will need to know to create accurate current-state and future- state maps for each of your product families and then to turn the current state into the future state rapidly and sustainably.

In Learning to See you will find:

• A foreword by Jim Womack and Dan Jones explaining the need for this tool.
• An introduction by Mike Rother and John Shook describing how they discovered the mapping tool in their study of Toyota.
• Guidance on identifying your product families.
• A detailed explanation of how to draw a current-state map.
• A practice case permitting you to draw a current-state map on your own, with feedback from Mike and John in the appendix on how you did.
• A detailed explanation of how to draw a future-state map.
• A second practice case permitting you to draw a future-state map, with "the answer" provided in the appendix.
• Guidance on how to designate a manager for each value stream.
• Advice on breaking implementation into easy steps.
• An explanation of how to use the yearly value stream plan to guide each product family through successive future states.

More than 50,000 copies of Learning to See have been sold in the past two years. Readers from across the world report that value stream mapping has been an invaluable tool to start their lean transformation and to make the best use of kaizen events.

Product Details

• Spiral-bound: 102 pages
• Publisher: Lean Enterprise Institute; Version 1.4 October 2009 edition (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0966784308
• ISBN-13: 978-0966784305
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 9.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Quality Control
  • #10 in Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Training

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Just Do It... February 27, 2004

By Brad Harrison

Format:Spiral-bound

I have completely worn out my copy of this book. It is the simplest, clearest, most practical book on lean that you will ever find. The first time I used the Value Stream Mapping techniques outlined in this book, I identified an improvement that has dramatically reduced our inventory, reduced lead times and saved over $500K annually.

Section III, entitled, "What Makes A value Stream Lean" is especially helpful. By doing the mapping and working toward the seven guidelines outlined in this section, we have made dramatic progress in our lean transformation. Using "Learning To See" in conjunction with another offering from the Lean Enterprise Institute ("Making Material Flow"), you can transform your plant. The only other requirement... get out from behind your desk and just do it!

I cannot recommend this book highly enough!

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good introduction to value stream mapping February 8, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Spiral-bound

The book is a good attempt at explaining how to use value stream mapping in a manufacturing plant. The format is sort like a workbook which makes it a little easier to use and also great as a teaching tool. What is lacking is more examples from a wide variety of industries from small to large so the reader can really understand how to apply the tool to their workplace. There is also a lack of application to areas outside of manufacturing where I think VSM could be applied: product design process and administrative processes. Overall it seems to be a good book, but you'll need some backup material from the web to round our your education on the subject.

43 of 49 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Learning To See December 11, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Spiral-bound

Learning to see is very helpful if you want to learn to establish value stream maps of your key processes. The book is set up like a work book and walks you through the process step by step. J. Womack is very prescriptive in how to produce value stream maps. It would be helpful to have additional examples from several industries. Value stream mapping is useful in helping to indentify areas that need improvement projects. They should be the basis for strategic plans for process improvement. This book will be helpful if you are new or trying to introduce others to the importance of value stream mapping.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars So you want to learn how to map the value stream? November 22, 2004

By Lean Manufacturing Engineer

Format:Spiral-bound

This is definitely THE starter book to learn vsm. Yes more examples would help, and yes so much information is covered by such little prose. The more I learn and practice lean, The more I am convinced of the importance in using value stream mapping to insure that the lean implementation process benefits the value stream (the so called critical path of the production process).
This key concept is where Six Sigma fails, and that is how do you select a Six Sigma Project that is going to impact the value stream?
The authors almost dare you to work through the ONE example you are to analyze on your own but LEARNING TO SEE starts you on the way to becoming a lean sensei.
STUDY STUDY STUDY this book.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Customer Review August 16, 2004

By A. Lwowski

Format:Spiral-bound

This book is written just like a book on lean manufacturing should be: short, to the point, and no crap. It's very informative, easy to read, a no academic wishy-washy stuff. A great buy!

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Learning to draw valuestream diagrams! October 22, 2006

By F. H. Van Saarloos

Format:Spiral-bound

Book info : 3rd edition published in 2003.

Pre required knowledge: SMED, Continuous Flow Manufacturing

Purchased price : USD 17,50

This book is a workbook, it does not handle a lot of theoretical stuff on LEAN. Also it relies on SMED and Continuous flow manufacturing and KANBAN, so if you're not familiar with that, you will need to do some reading on those topics as well.

Basically this book gives you a technique how do draw you current value stream with all the necessary details. Next it explains how to draw your future value stream and what to do to get there (on paper and on the shop floor). Be careful it does not say how to get there

The book is not very complicated and the way it is explained every fool can do the trick. What I found pity was that the majority of the book goes on the production process. It does not say a lot on the office value stream. Still, I can recommend this book to everybody that is looking for a practical starter on LEAN.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent introduction to VSM February 12, 2009

By O. David

Format:Spiral-bound

PRE-REQUISITE for VSM: (recommended)

Whatever approach to continuously display and improve processes you might choose, you will always need to measure a few basic parameters. Meanwhile Process Tagging&Mapping results only in a visible display of a process after analyzing the Tagging-exercise, Value-Stream-Mapping (VSM) forces you to follow every process/ task, from your customer(s) up the stream towards your supplier(s). So VSM is real "going-to-the-gemba" (go see yourself) - a very efficient way to get real insights because a good picture always says more than a thousand words - and levels the insights for everyone. The title of this book ' Learning To See ' therefore sticks to the heart of Lean and how to display it : learning to see non-value added tasks and step-by-step elimination of waste.

What do you need to know, before starting to learn the VSM-method, in order to get the most out of this approach? There are a few parameters describing every process-task. It's not rocket-science, but someone seriously studying about operations should first of all start to learn a few basics. This basics are about how systems interact (SDB: system dynamic behavior). This basics of SDB will help you to proceed with VSM and to understand :

- what parameters you need to measure and how they interact to total system performance
- what do this parameters tell you and therefore what are future improvement steps
- very important: you will be able to simply check the data for consistency: e.g. does Little's law hold in the long-run ? Can the production be achieved or are there any workstations with an utilization u larger than 100% ? Generally speaking, is there any flaw in the data measured ?...

There are different books about SDB or including SDB - take your time to learn the basics and you will better understand and use the VSM-method.

ABOUT this BOOK:

The book always takes a look from a customer perspective, applies to a single plant level and for a specific product/parts family. There are two examples used in this book, a quit simple linear process to describe the proceeding (ACME_Stamping) and a further more complex example (TWI_Industries) for yourself as a home-work exercise. Based on the ACME_Stamping example, the book proceeds as follows:

1.) What is VSM and how to select an appropriate product family

2.) Step by step drawing of your current-state map: starting downstream at the customer (demand) and measuring/ displaying process parameters and WIP going upstream in the plant towards the suppliers. You will find a simple definition of some lean measures as Cycle-time, Value-Creating-time and Lead-time

3.) Theory about what makes a value-stream lean : excellent guideline with 7 main points, how to proceed, when your current-state value-stream is laying in front of you. The guideline uses simple examples and shows the most frequent VSM-icons for illustration purpose. This guideline includes the meaning of Takt-Time, what to use where flow does not apply (supermarket, FIFO-lane, sequenced pull), what is a pacemaker process and why to use it, how to level the load (and mix), how to create an initial pull and what is 'pitch ', the importance to develop the ability to produce Every-Part-Every-X to an ever shorter time

4.) Based on the ACME_Stamping current-state example and the knowledge provided by the 7 guidelines, the future-state VSM is developed. Considering there are always different solutions to improve something, the authors explain the importance to define in advance from a customer perspective , whether you might go for an Assemble-To-Order (ATO) or a Make-To-Order (MTO) layout. This important difference drives how your future-state Value-Stream should look like and strongly influences your customer lead time, overall lead time and other performance measures as the number of Work-In-Process and the Throughput.

5.) In order to achieve the future-state, the necessary improvements per loop (refers to control loops) are broken down to the single action steps required. The authors show how to develop a simple Yearly Value-Stream Plan, which shows for every loop the measurable goals to be achieved and schedules the single action steps required to implement the process improvement. Continuous process improvement never stops and considering stretch targets for further improvement, you will continuously improve your processes together with your workforce.

For every improvement issue you need to apply suitable tools/ methods helping you to achieve step-by-step improvements. In order to learn how to reduce change-over-time, how to improve machine/ process availability and how to reduce scrap&rework rates, you may start to read about SMED, OEE / TPM, ZQC and 5s etc. This is not part of this book and needs some further reading by your own.

Even though this book merits its 5 stars, there are a few minor issues, I did not completely agree with - this does not reduce the value of this book at all. My discrepancies are: the missing capacity in the ACME-Stamping example (current-state: ASSEMBLY#1), the to low avg. lotsize in the TWI-Industries example (current-state) and finally some missing important information about how to determine the buffer-size of a FIFO-lane (to prevent starvation by blocking).

I read different books about VSM, but this book is clearly the simplest introduction to VSM for a beginner. No other book provides so much basics easy explained to get really started. Later on, for further development of your knowledge and to learn about how to proceed with a higher product mix, the book ' Creating Mixed Model Value Streams ' - from Kevin J. Duggan - is recommended. To include office processes as well in your optimization - the book ' The Complete Lean Enterprise ' - from B. Keyte / D. Locher - will do a good job. In office-areas of highly customized product offering - where VSM is quit tricky - I stick with Process Tagging&Mapping (compare Quick Response Manufacturing). Sometimes your intuition might tell you, that VSM is not applicable because of high product-mix variability. In this case simply start with a Product Family Analysis - this is the fundamental requirement to change from any process-oriented layout to a customer/ product oriented layout. Not all product families are completely customized and you might find suitable candidates, meanwhile other product families can be solved by virtual cells and other lead-time reducing approaches.

To start your VSM journey, do you need any consulting from outside? In my opinion this might depend mainly on your internal knowledge about System Dynamic Behavior. If this knowledge is weak, any help from outside is welcome - else you might take off on your own.

Enjoy reading,
Oliver David Read more ›