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)…
Tag: lean tools
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…
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…