Value Stream Mapping For Gear Manufacturing Mapping

Lean manufacturing is being followed by various organizations over these few decades. Lean manufacturing is started in many companies in order to enhance manufacturing practice change which mainly focuses on improving the efficiency of operations by eliminating and reducing wastes. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is one of the key lean tools used to identify the opportunities for various lean techniques. The contrast of the before and after the LP initiatives in determine managers potential benefits such as reduced production lead-time and lower work-in-process inventory. As VSM involves in all of the process steps, both value added and non-value added, are analyzed and using VSM as a visual tool to help see the hidden waste and sources of waste. A Current State Map is drawn to document how things actually operated on the production floor. Then, a Future State Map is developed to design a lean process flow through the elimination of the root causes of waste and through process improvements. An Implementation Plan then outline details of the steps needed to support the LP objectives. This paper demonstrates the VSM techniques and discusses the application in an LP initiative on a product case study.