The Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD) is one of the most powerful inventions in terms of process visualisations I have ever met so far. Coming from the IT community, its main purpose is to show how an IT project is progressing. Those projects are usually dividable into smaller work units (i.e. functionalities, user cases or histories)…
Author: Christian Gut
The D in PDCA stands for Do, not Discuss
PDCA is abbreviation for four simple steps: Plan, Do, Check and Act. Its main idea is that any change (Act) should first be analysed (Plan), tested (Do) and verified (Check). PDCA is probably the most prominent concept of Lean. In fact, many confuse PDCA—and the related practice of continuous improvement—as Lean Management’s main objective, disregarding…
Comments from Mike Orzen about Value Stream Mapping in Lean IT
As mentioned in a previous post, Flowcharts and Value Stream Maps are different animals. Now I found a very brief but insightful Youtube video explaining why the exercise of Value Stream Mapping in Lean IT is important and shouldn’t be confused with Flowcharting.
Case Study – Kanban board for a purchasing & import department
Kanban boards were originally invented as tool to link the information flow between work cells, but in the last couple of years this concept had been adapted to steer the delivery of IT teams. However, it may also be used to facilitate the coordination efforts for a purchasing & import department, as I like to show in…
No Gantt Diagrams please – SO&P in Manufacturing and Services
In the service sector the planning efforts often lack of effectiveness because the wrong tools are used, namely project planning software. MS Project, for example, allows you to create very detailed plans of tasks and resource allocations, which can be presented in nicely laid-out charts and tables. So it seduces any manager to embark on…
WIP limits matter
One objective of Lean should be a continuous reduction of inventory levels. But while there seems to be a common understanding about the benefits of low inventory levels in manufacturing, the folks in indirect areas often refuse to embrace the idea of WIP limits. In fact, indirect areas process so much projects, tasks and activities in…
Visual Management for Maintenance Operations
Compared to manufacturing processes the operation of maintenance areas face particular challenges: The scope per workpiece varies a lot. Levelling of workload must be flexible, due to unpredictability in urgency and required man hours. The idea of Takt is can’t be implemented easily because physical and/or technical constraints, paired with the problems mentioned above, might…
VSM, Swimlane and Flowchart: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Imagine you are analysing a value stream and instruct your team to create a VSM (Value Stream Map) for any kind of administrative or software development process. When you return a couple of hours later, all you see is a giant flow chart. “That’s not a VSM, that’s a Flow Chart”, you might say. But usually you…
7 types of waste in Lean Manufacturing and Lean Services/Lean IT
How does Lean Services/Lean IT differ from Lean Manufacturing? Do we actually have the same types of waste? While everyone is comfortable with the 7 types of waste in Lean Manufacturing, there seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the classification of waste in the service and IT sector. I often hear comments that the…
Graphic: 7 types of waste in services/IT
A simple illustration of the 7 types of waste in Lean Services: Overproduction, Handover, Searches/Movement, Overprocessing, Waiting, Backlog, Errors.