In these times where the competitiveness of price, quality of our products and services are market demands, we must have tools to counter these demands.
The value chain mapping offers a vision of the current state of our company and the optimal place to which we want to reach in terms of our process, efficiently reducing waste costs such as: overproduction, inventories, waiting times, transportation, movements, quality failures and reprocessing, thus avoiding capital flight, which today are essential for the stability of an organization. As well as a better control and monitoring of all the stages that the product needs for its manufacture.
The value chain is a very powerful tool that is used to create material and information flow maps that are very useful for manufacturing and administrative processes.
This tool allows companies to map from the flow of materials that starts from the raw material in its raw state and goes through different transformation and manufacturing processes, until it becomes a finished product. You learn to analyze the start of a product until it has finished. This leads to starting with a current status map that tells you where you are; that is, what information do you have. After finishing with your current state, you continue with the future state, which helps you see where you are going and how you are going to achieve that route that you captured on your map; With this process, you eliminate costs and reduce operations, down to the raw material and goes through the transformation and manufacturing process.
HISTORY
The use of the methodology for the elimination of waste or dumps in companies to achieve competitive advantages within an organization, was initiated in the 80's by the main engineer of Toyota Taiichi Ohno and Sensei Shigeo Shingo, mainly oriented towards productivity, rather than to quality. The reason for the productivity to improve is focused on making the methodology help to expose the future problems of the organization and the quality in the system. Thus, the systematic attack against waste or dumps, is also a solution to the factors poor quality as well as fundamental management problems. The 7 commonly accepted wastes, garbage or dumps in Toyota's production system originally are:
- Over production (more than necessary) Waiting Transportation Inappropriate processes Unnecessary inventory Unnecessary movements Defects (bug fixes)
Years later, Michael Porter proposed the concept of "value chain" to identify ways to generate more benefit for the consumer and thereby gain a competitive advantage. The concept lies in making the greatest effort to achieve the fluidity of the core processes of the company, which implies a functional interrelation based on cooperation. Among the core processes are:
- Realization of new products. Inventory management. Processing of orders and delivery. Customer service.
For Porter, the goals indicate what a business unit intends to achieve; the strategy responds to how to achieve them. The most used instrument to carry out an analysis that allows to extract clear strategic implications for the improvement of activities with an efficiency and effectiveness approach is the Value Chain .
Definition
In accounting, it refers to a theoretical increase in value above and above the initial cost. This value is generally assumed to be greater than the cumulative costs that have been 'aggregated' throughout the production process stage. The activities of the real added value (AVAR) are those that, seen by the final client, are necessary to provide the output that the client is waiting for. There are many activities that the company requires, but that do not add value from the point of view of the advantages for the customer (value-added activities in the company). In addition, there are other activities that do not add any value, for example, storage.
CONCEPTS
When talking about value chain mapping, several concepts are used, which are typical of their philosophy, generally called technicalities, therefore, the concepts used to describe the value chain mapping process are described below..
Value chain
The value chain is a complex concept that considers all the activities required for the fulfillment of the goal of uniting the company with the customer, which provides a functional value supported by the good (product or service) produced.
The logistics chain covers all activities from the preparation of raw materials at the supplier to the distribution for sale, the necessary maintenance of the product and the waste disposal processes.
The flow of the value chain is articulated in a physical dimension (in circulation of real goods) and in an informational dimension (information on sales, on orders to fulfill, etc.). In the physical dimension, operations are carried out which in turn are planned and controlled from the device level at which the information flow is carried out.
The flow of information begins from the market or client to configure the product / service in correspondence to the needs or requirements of the client. It provides information on the dates and other conditions of delivery of the product and is the basic input in the planning, direction of operations and control of the manufacture and assembly of a product.
Working capacity
It is the amount of work that can be done on a regular basis in a unit of work over a period of time.
Workload
Load is the quantity of work to be carried out in a center, production line or productive unit, during a certain period of time.
Flexible production cell
It is a technical system specialized in a manufacturing phase, composed of the three subsystems: physical process, material flow (parts and / or tools) and information. Its purpose is the manufacture of small or medium batches of parts with similar processes, but with inequalities in material, geometry and size.
Preparation cost
Cost caused by the set-up activities for the operation of a machine, production system. It is very important because it directly affects the sizing of the lots. For the reduction of the costs for preparation, the SMED technique is applied, Single Minutes Exchange of Die or Change of tools in less than ten minutes.
Bottlenecks (bottlenecks)
It is called in those production processes in which excessive waiting times are generated and that prevent the regular flow of the process to the following operations.
Product development and design
The Engineering Department is the one with an essential activity, there being reciprocal information with the rest of the areas such as Marketing, Financial Operations, etc. This stage in turn comprises three phases: preliminary design, prototype construction and testing, and final design.
Gantt diagram
It is the graphic representation of planning used to program resources and assign times; developed by Henry L. Gantt in the early 20th century. Also commonly called a work program.
Line Balancing
These are the decisions oriented towards the objective of ensuring that all the means of a production line have a workload adequate to the available capacities and distributed in a harmonious way. In the case of an assembly line, it designates the assignment of assembly microoperations to each station, so that when the object undergoing transformation passes through said station, the occupation of that station is maximized.
Manufacturing (Manufacturing)
The set of activities of transformation of a material input into a product is called manufacturing or manufacturing.
JIT (Just In Time)
The purpose of Just-in-time is that each process produces only the parts necessary for each subsequent stage and only in the quantity and the time necessary for these parts to be used in the next operation of the process. The goal is to have the least amount of material in process, that is, a continuous flow. Taiichi Ohno defines JIT this way: "Having the exact part at the exact moment and in the exact quantity for assembly".
Kanban
(Card, in Japanese) It is a visual and simple system of transmission of manufacturing orders and removal of materials between the different work centers that make up a manufacturing line.
Layout
It is the distribution of machinery and equipment in a plant. It is one of the strategic areas to determine the long-term efficiency of operations, its objective being such a development of activities that meets the requirements of: Product and volume design, process equipment and capacity, quality of life in the work and building and location restrictions.
The lay out reflects the organization of processes, associated machines and equipment and work areas, including customer service and warehousing. An effective lay out also presents the flow of materials and personnel within and between areas.
Manufacturing batch
This is the name of the production lot size ordered by the production department based on customer requirements. Through production batches, the production flow is made more efficient.
Material Requirements Planning (MRP)
It designates the articles and materials management system that takes as a starting point the hierarchical explosion, from level to level, of the needs of final products, until reaching the most basic components and raw materials. Future-oriented, not past like point-of-order materials management systems.
STEPS TO DEVELOP A VALUE CHAIN MAPPING
There are several steps that are followed to carry out an excellent elaboration of a value chain mapping.
First of all, it is necessary to have a vision of the client's requirements, which are reflected in the process sheets of each operation throughout the plant, which must be carried out as a preliminary journey, without making any notation about it.
The previous tour helps greatly when you go down to the floor to carry out the registrations, you have a vision of the entire process of the product and not be guessing that it follows because it generates a waste of time and sometimes unnecessary steps or registrations that they would make the mapping more complete.
Subsequently, it must be prepared with a table with clasp, blank sheets of pencil and chronometer, to be writing down all the steps and cycles that are actually working in the company. All the details that are found during the process will be recorded. Sometimes, they find operations that are done, because for some reason they are not registered in the process or standard operation sheets.
Once all the mapping has been carried out, the data is brought to the office and all the points noted are analyzed, to generate improvements that offer the company a reduction in process times or product delivery, but the most important thing is to decrease or eradicate waste that slows down the process and generates losses of all kinds for the company.
DEVELOPMENT OF A VALUE CHAIN MAPPING
The development of the value chain mapping is carried out in any company that wishes to improve and remain competitive in the national and international market, to counteract the effect caused by the "Asian tide", which is taking over the international market as offer better prices and quality in their products or services. In case the mapping is a continuous improvement that is made, always visualizing the current state of the company from the beginning, analyzing in which parts it is necessary to improve, writing them down in a program of activities to carry them out; With this, a future value chain mapping is being generated. It is called the future, because it is how in the future you want the company to be with the changes applied.
DEVELOPMENT OF A CURRENT STATE VALUE CHAIN MAPPING
1.- Draw the icon of the supplier, customer and production control
2.- Put the requirements per day and per month
3.- Place the daily production and its requirements
4.- Draw the icon of the shipment that goes out to the client and within the frequency of deliveries
5.- Draw the icon of the delivery to the supplier and within the frequency of delivery
6.- Add the process icons in order from left to right
7.- Add the information icons at the bottom of each process
8.- Add the communication and information icons and the frequency in which it is executed
9.- Obtain the process information and add it in the corresponding text box
10.- Add icons and number of operators
11.- Add inventory and days icons
12.- Add push and FIFO icons
13.- Add add any other information that is useful to the process
14.- Add the hours of the process
15.- Review the lean process cycles
16.- Calculate the total cycle time and the days required.
DEVELOPMENT OF A FUTURE STATE VALUE CHAIN MAPPING
1.- First, the Takt time is obtained to determine the time necessary to manufacture a part.
2.- The bottlenecks of the machines are identified in order to make them more efficient.
3.- The improvement is noted where the number of operations is reduced and therefore the level of inventory in process, determining the size of the required lot
4.- Identify the potential work stations, if necessary, determine the use of work cells to make it more efficient. Generally used when performing similar operations.
5.- Determine the situations of the KANBAN. A Supermarket is used at the beginning of the process in the reception of raw material in order to reduce the days of inventory.
6.- Establish planning methods. The new data released in the improvement application are recorded in the data box to perform the operation in the shortest possible time, better balance of operation and reduce operating personnel.
7.- The new production time and non-added value time are obtained. In the lower part of the sheet, the new times of added value and non-added value are recorded, which is visualized to have improved greatly according to the previous situation.
FLOW OF INFORMATION AND MATERIALS
The flow of information and materials is carried out:
- The information provided by the client starts from right to left. This is flowing to the production control department and in turn this department is going to provide it to the supplier to supply the raw material required for the elaboration of the products or product.
Customer information is placed on the value chain mapping sheet at the top of the sheet and as previously noted, flows from right to left.
- The information on the material process flows from left to right, and it starts from the moment the company receives the raw material, applies all the transformation processes, until the finished product is shipped to the customer.
The material process information flow is noted at the bottom of the value chain mapping sheet
SELECTING A PRODUCT OR A FAMILY
A product or product family is determined or selected by following these steps:
- See the type or types of products. Analyze all the details that each product represents. Write down all the operations that each product carries. If some products have special operations, write them down. Then the products that carry the same operations are grouped.
All of the above is represented in a mapping of the value chain in which all the details of each product will be recorded; All these data are obtained from the specifications presented by the client requesting the service of elaboration or manufacture of their products.
By separating several products by operations or jobs, these represent a family or families that are grouped together and that in their process will be faster or more fluid, since this will result in fewer changes to models or tools for their process.
BENEFITS
- You can see the flow that follows the value chain. With the value chain mapping, all operations are captured for a better vision of the processes involved in the production of the product. All products are viewed from a broader and more open perspective. It is when the plant as a whole is mapped, from the moment the process starts, to the moment the product is shipped. You draw your flow of information and materials, based on your initial value chain. With this, all the data provided by the client and all the materials involved in the process are displayed. Help to form and make your future state map of the value chain. Having all the data as it currently is,It helps you visualize the areas of opportunity to improve by applying all the necessary techniques to improve and capture your future state. It highlights the activities necessary to achieve the future state map.
SYMBOLOGY
Process symbologies in the Mapping of the Value Chain.
The symbology used in value chain mapping are not standard and there are many variations. They are created according to the needs of each mapping or company. There, their use is standard so that all who use or see them have the same pattern and see them from the same point of view
Client provider.
This icon represents the provider and is placed inside the mapping box, at the top of the left side.
The client is also represented by this icon, but this is placed at the top on the right side; representing or indicating the flow of information.
Process box.
This icon is a process, operation, machine or department, through which the material flows.
In case you link to multiple workstation connections, even when some WIP inventory accumulates in the middle of machines (or stations), the entire line would already demonstrate a single box.
Data box.
This icon is placed below the operation to be performed and contains important information and / or data required for the analysis and application of the method. The basic information that is placed in a data box, corresponds to the lower manufacturing of the shipping frequencies during some changes, the material information, is handled, transfers things and classifies according to size, quantity demand per period, etc.
Work cell.
This icon indicates that multiple processes are inside a work cell. Such cells usually process limited products of families or in a single product case.
Symbologies of materials
Inventory.
These icons demonstrate inventory between two processes. In mapping current states, the amount of inventory can be approximated or defined to count, and this is noted below the triangle.
This icon also represents storage for raw materials and finished products.
Cargo or freight transport.
This icon represents movement of raw materials from suppliers to the factory site. Or, the shipment movement of finished products from the factory to the customer.
Push arrow.
This icon represents the »push» of material from one operation to another or from one process to the next.
Supermarket.
This is an inventory »supermarket» (kanban stockpoint). It is a small inventory and is available when the client requests some products, it can be taken from there and a manufacturing card is automatically generated to replace the material taken from the Supermarket.
A supermarket reduces overproduction and cuts down on unnecessary inventory.
Pull material.
Supermarkets connect to these icons and means that the following process “pulls” the previous one to work to replenish the amount pulled by the subsequent process.
FIFO line.
First Entries, First Exits of inventory. Use this icon when processes connect with a PEPS method that limits information entry. The product that is first manufactured or manufactured is the one that will first be sent to your next operation or shipment.
External cargo.
It refers to the transport, either of service to the client or of the transport of the supply of the raw material to the company or factory.
Symbology information in the Mapping of the value chain.
Production control.
This icon indicates that here there is a production control department, from which the information required to start the manufacture of a product will start.
Daily shipment
This icon indicates that manual information is provided for the production of products, generally focused on work orders.
Monthly information
This icon in the form of a reyo, means that monthly information is being provided electronically, which will determine the amount of manufacturing or response of the company.
Kanban production.
This icon sends the signal for production of a certain number of parts.
Kanban withdrawal.
This icon illustrates that a material is going to be withdrawn to a supermarket, which sends a signal for the previous operation to proceed to manufacture the quantity of removed pieces.
kanban signs.
This icon indicates the inventory that is level within each supermarket in the middle of two processes
Kanban card.
It is an icon in which the quantity to collect is indicated. Two cards are often used, for the exchange of withdrawal and to order production.
Pull sequence.
This icon represents removing material from sub-assembly preferences, to produce a certain number of products or items.
Load balancing.
This icon is the tool used in kanban to level production
MRP / ERP
This icon determines the use of the different methods to order the production scheduling required by the client or other centralized methods.
GENERAL SYMBOLS
Improvement.
This icon is generally used in future value chain mapping, since it is where improvements in the process are applied.
Operator.
This symbol represents the operating personnel at each station. When more than one operator is going to be employed in the process or station, this is represented with an additional number to the figure.
Value added and not value added
After the mapping, in the lower part of it, plasma the times of each operation, as well as the inventory. The times noted at the top of the icon crest refer to value-added times; that is, they are the times in which the transformation to the product is carried out. The times that are noted at the bottom, correspond to those that do not generate added value to the product (waiting times).
APPLICATIONS
Today the mapping of the value chain is of great importance and is used in all companies or factories that have visions of growth and that do not want to overlook any loss of time or material; in other words, not having any kind of waste which represents ceasing to be profitable and competitive in the market.
In the majority of the manufacturing or transformation companies, which are installed throughout the Mexican Republic, as well as in the maquiladoras, which are generally scattered along the border between Mexico and the United States, they seek to be competitive and be the focus of customers to develop their products, the above is achieved by improving prices, quality and delivery times, then all companies tend to apply the methodology to reduce waste or change and transform those waste into something productive for the improvement of the company.
III.- CONCLUSIONS
In general, any entrepreneur who has in mind to make profits without having many capital losses or profits that do not generate assets, will look for a way to apply value chain mapping in their companies or businesses, because through this tool, their companies or businesses are going to be profitable and generate great profits, which would result in a reinvestment in the business and its stability in the market.
Nowadays, whoever wants to remain in the market will try to satisfy customers, offering them, apart from good quality and on-time deliveries, lower prices, which are achieved by not having waste; and these in turn are achieved by visualizing the areas of opportunity in the value chain mappings, to convert that waste capital into capital that flows and generates profit.
IV.- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Cost Reduction - Kaizen Costing - Lefcovich, Mauritius - www.monografias.com - 2003.Kaizen - Continual improvement applied to administrative-bureaucratic activities and processes - Lefcovich, Mauritius - monografias.com - 2003 Kaizen Strategy - Lefcovich, Mauritius - www.gestiopolis.com - 2004 Book Kan Ban (Made simple) emystifying and Applying, Totoya's Legendary Manufacturing Procces. Gross Mc Publishing. INNIS, John M. Gross and Kenneth R. Mcinnis Presentation (Class Notes) Learning To See Lean Manufacturing Seminar. Tecnologico de Monterrey, Dec 2002.http: //www.strategosinc.com/value-stream-mapping-3.htmhttp: //www.productivity-3.com.mxhttp: //www.amacombooks.org
