Profound Knowledge
Profound Knowledge opens the door to Increased Process Performance, Decreasing operational expenses, increasing margin, increasing quality, and increasing EBITA
You attain Profound Knowledge by using the powerful Lean Six Sigma tool called a Value Stream. A Value Stream captures the performance of every process that is used from customer request to solution delivery. Rolled Throughput Yield is a measure of the overall quality performance through a Value Stream. This is the percentage of a product or service delivered through a system from start to finish without error or defect. Lead Time is the time it takes to get through a Value Stream. Whereas both of these metrics focus on Value Stream performance, analogous metrics work for each process.
Once you have the knowledge of the overall Value Stream performance and you want to improve that, then you look at the performance of each process within the value Stream. As you obtain this Profound Knowledge of your Value Stream, you have all the information needed to direct you where to focus your improvement efforts.
The improvements you make improve flow. Improve by removing activities and actions that do not contribute to the value of the product or service. This Profound Knowledge results in:
- less work performed on the product or service thereby increasing Value Stream velocity,
- less actions performed on the product also increase quality due to removing actions from the value Stream, and finally
- performing less actions results in less cost to complete a Value Stream
Pull
If possible, the next step is to create “pull” where ever you can. I Explain this with an example. Fort Wayne, Indiana put up a website for individuals and businesses to request building permits. By collecting routing information through the website the permit request can be automatically routed to the right individual. Rather than fill up this individual’s email with requests, a pull system is set up. Each of the building permit analysts then goes to a cue to wait. When the analyst is ready they go to the system and ask for the next building permit. This may seem nonsensical, however, pull systems outperform push systems.
The Power of the Value Stream delivers the Profound Knowledge which pervades the Toyota Production System:
The Value Stream Gives You Profound Knowledge of your System:
Profound Knowledge Leads to Operational Excellence, a Competitive Advantage:
In Conclusion:
The last step, which goes on forever, is to continually improve the processes. Toyota’s Kata Continuous Improvement, Policy Propagation, and Realization program accomplish this.