8 Key questions for drawing a future state value stream

The objective of VSM is to highlight sources of waste and eliminate them by implementing a future state value stream. Based on your answers, mark your future state ideas and then you can draw a future-state map with the same set of symbols used for current state mapping.

What is the Takt Time for the chosen product?
Finding out the Takt Time helps you to identify your production capacity and allocate resources effectively.
To know more about Takt Time, click here.
Do you make-to-order or make-to-stock?
As the dispatch department withdraws products from the final stock to prepare them for delivery, the kanban from those trays is sent back to the previous process. Each of those kanban essentially says, “The customer has just consumed these parts, please make another lot of these parts and deliver it to dispatch”. This is in a make-to-stock system. The Make-to-order system eliminates finished goods inventory.
Where can you use continuous flow processing?
Continuous flow refers to producing one piece at a time, with each item passed immediately from one process step to the next without waiting in between.
To learn more about continuous flow, click here.
Where will you need to use the supermarket pull system?
There are often spots in the Value stream where continuous flow is not possible and batching is necessary. Use supermarkets at these spots in order to maintain the continuous flow at other processes.
To know more about supermarkets, click here.
At what point in the process will you schedule the production (pacemaker process)?
If you are planning to operate your process as a pull system, then a single scheduling point should regulate the entire value stream for that product family. This regulating point called as pacemaker process controls the pace of the production in the entire line.
To learn how to select a pacemaker process, click here.
How will you level the production mix?
Producing one product per shift as shown below, minimizes the number of required changeovers but increases lead time, hides quality problems, and causes overproduction.

Instead, we need to level the mix of parts evenly over the shift at the pacemaker process. This will force you to reduce the changeover time and with leveling, which requires much more frequent changeovers, the cell’s / line’s production mix looks like this:

How will you schedule the pacemaker process?
There must be a paced release of work instructions and paced withdraw of finished goods at the pacemaker. At every pitch increment, a material handler brings the next kanban (the next increment of work) to the pacemaker process and moves an increment of finished goods to the finished goods area.
To know more about pitch, click here.
Do you need additional process improvements?
- Reduction of changeover time and batch sizes at all processes that feed supermarkets.
- Elimination of any long time(s) required to change between part numbers.
- Improvement in uptime of on-demand resources.
- Elimination of waste to reduce total work content within work cells to meet or exceed Takt time.
- Identifying within a future state maps the areas where kaizen events need to occur.
We must be sure to kick off these improvements projects by creating a “pull” of the improvement. That is instead of “pushing” a team.

Conclusion:

With the shortened production lead time through the shop floor, the pacemaker process operating consistently to takt time, and fast response to problems, we can comfortably reduce the number of finished goods we hold.

To learn more interesting facts about future state value stream mapping, click on the button below.

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