This week, Value Stram Mapping (VSM) played a significant role in my personal learning curve. After reading the book Learning to see this week I finally understood VSM is not just an improvement tool, but a management tool. In our organisation we use VSM or Processmaps at project level, where we decide what improvements we want to make from our Lean team perspective.
However, in a learning organization characterized by Lean culture, the VSM should be uses at top-management level to tunnel all improvement projects, modifications and kaizens.
An inspiring visit from our European Lean Expert this week comfirmed this theory. Until now, as a lean team we focussed on bottom-up improvements using Lean tools (kaizen) en we were optimizing processes using VSM and processmaps from our supportive role. The next step to create a Learning organization would be for top-management to use VSM for all their decisions, where the future state map is pinned in the board room visualizing the vision and strategy of our plant to make sure all descisions contribute in reaching the future state.
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