Introducing Value Stream Mapping Insights

Hey there, welcome back. So we are actually starting a new series of videos here at Gimba Academy and what we're going to try to do is from time to time we're going to get authors who have written books related to continuous improvement, Lean, Six Sigma, whatever it might be and kind of have them give us a book review. I mean, I can do the book review, but I think it's even better to have the actual author tell us about their book. And we're going to take some shots of the books and just give you a really good feeling of whether or not you'll want to read it. It could be seen as we're trying to help them sell books, and that's fine if you want to buy books. But really, we're trying to provide the value of letting you know what these books are all about. And then if you want to buy it, great. And if you don't, that's fine too. To start, we're going to meet with our friend Karen Martin. Thank you so much for having me here, Ron. Many of you have seen Karen already. We've done some interviews. I was in Toronto at the AME conference. But Karen is actually here in our studios here in Fort Worth. So what we're going to start with is your latest book, Karen, Values for Mapping, and How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation. And... Mike Osterling is your co-author. Yes. Okay. So what I want to start with though is, you know, Gemba Academy obviously has a value stream mapping course and many of the folks here watching this video are probably familiar with Learning to See, which is, I guess, the original Bible of value stream mapping written by John Shook and Mike Rother from the Lean Enterprise Institute. Great book. What I wanted to start with... is the first kind of, I don't know, what do you call these? The blurbs. Blurbs on the back of the book here from John Shook, who is the chairman and CEO of the Lean Enterprise Institute and author of Learning to See. Yes. Okay. Says value stream mapping has evolved from its roots as a tool used by geeks to reimagine and reconfigure manufacturing operations to a process to enable deep organizational intervention and transformation with value stream mapping. Karen Martin and Mike Osterling provide an outstanding guide for practitioners engaged in the challenging work of improving the horizontal flow of value across organizations. So it's pretty incredible that the guy who wrote the original Bible on value stream mapping wrote such nice things. So first question before we get into the details of the book. book, Karen, why did you write this book and why should anyone read it if they've read Learning to See? Yeah, good question. So we love Learning to See. We both learned from Learning to See. That's how we learned to map. One thing that we've noticed since Learning to See was released is that the office service and knowledge work world. didn't seem to connect with it quite as much as manufacturing did. Yeah. There are in fact some nuances. I mean, it's mainly the same way you go about mapping a value stream, but there are some nuances that are critical. So that's one reason. The other thing is that we see a lot of a lot of value stream maps, so-called value stream maps, that aren't really value stream maps. And so we thought it was time to kind of rethink and remind people that maybe knew our Talena, maybe didn't even read Learning to See, because it was 1999 when that came out. Gosh, not long ago. Yeah, yeah. Long time. So what a value stream map really is and how to, I liken it to a Ferrari. If you keep the Ferrari in the garage, then it's not going to be very happy. And if you take it out on 35 mile an hour roads, you'll get some benefit. But if you let that thing roll on an open highway, then that's where the Ferrari shines. And value stream mapping can be that same thing for organizations. Nice, nice. So let's just kind of walk through the book. These videos are going to be kind of short. Who wrote these? the introduction. Did you guys write that yourselves? Yeah, we wrote it ourselves. The book, we didn't have a preface or a prologue, sometimes people call it. Yeah. But yeah, we wrote it all. Well, I think what might be helpful is just to kind of go through each chapter. So there's six chapters, and we're going to get some shots of the book here that we'll cut in here. So that is stream management. It's chapter one, and it's 26 pages. So what's going on, and what's the high-level elevator speech for chapter one? Yeah, so chapter one is all about about what a value stream really is and what it is not. And so a lot of people get confused between process level mapping and value stream mapping. So that is getting people very clear on how big we're talking about across an organization and why to map. So it's a little bit about the why and the what is it, and then the how comes after that. OK. All right. Chapter two, setting the stage and enabling success. Yes, so most organizations die fine, don't do proper planning for. for value stream mapping. We very much believe in the use of a very formal charter, and the charter's used to scope it. It's used for team formation, and you don't form the team, by the way, until it's properly scoped. It's used as a communication tool, a consensus-building tool. That's another. The power of charters that are properly socialized is that you get everyone understanding before you even begin why you're even doing this. What problems are we trying to solve? So that chapter really centers on development of the charter and socializing the charter. Now, it's been a while since I have read the book. And there was a section. in here, I can't remember exactly where it was, where it talked about the team. And there was one thing that was kind of an aha moment for me. And... I wanted to explore, you wrote about the fact that team member selection for the value stream map helped me out. It shouldn't necessarily be the front line workers. Right, right. Talk a little bit about that. I think that was in this chapter, wasn't it? Yes, it is. Thank you for asking that question. It's vital. So a lot of value stream maps are being done by operators and team leads and things like that. And while there's some benefit in that because they're more knowledgeable about the current state, The problem is they don't have the authority to authorize the kinds of future state improvements that are big. Right. And so we've played around with team formation for, you know, since 1999. Yeah. And we believe that you do better by biasing the team toward leadership, so heavily leadership-oriented. And I mean as high as you can. So one thing we say in the book is go as high as you can except as low as you need to. So most of my teams have vice presidents on them and sometimes C-level. And because, again, the future state is something where if you're just a manager or a front-line person, you may not be able to say, hey, yeah, let's cut this functional area out of the value stream altogether. Let's cross-train these two functional areas to do this work instead of having a handoff with a delay. Let's, you know, rethink how we even launch this product. You know, that's big things. What are your thoughts, though, on having some... Also having some frontline folks in there, do you do that as well? We do if they have the right composition. So one thing to think about is in the future state, you're usually talking about some pretty big organizational changes if you're using it as the Ferrari. And so if you have frontline people in the team, they have to be pretty mature and able to handle paradigms, big organizational paradigms being challenged. Some of the future state discussions and current state discussions can get, you know, a little tricky where you're talking about maybe some customer problems and things like that. So if you have lower level people on the team, they have to be able to handle those kinds of conversations. Or my job might change. Right, right, right. Who moved my cheese, right? Right, yeah. You see the new book that's out, it's I moved your cheese. Oh, really? Really? No, I have not seen that. I moved your cheese. Oh, very cool. I wanted to check that out. I have not seen that. Okay. All right. All right. So chapter three is understanding the current state. And that looks like it's a pretty meaty chapter. Yeah. So close to 50 pages. Yeah. That's when we get into. the mechanics of mapping, the actual how to, you know, on a wall with 36 inch wide paper and post-its and markers at hand, what do you do? And so that's where we talk about the frontline engagement and how walking the value stream or going to the GEMBA is the proper way to get that frontline involvement. So what's different about your approach there to learning to see, because obviously learning to see is very prescriptive as well. Nothing. It's very much the same as far as going to the GEMBA at this stage. The office is service world just aren't used to doing that. And so we're trying to push that message that even if it's a value stream that crosses several buildings and seas and seas of cubicles, it still is valuable to go out and walk the value stream because you get insights you'll never get sitting in a conference room. And asking the front lines for the questions and asking them for some of the metrics that we use, they're the experts, right? And that going to the GAMBA is such a bonding experience between the front lines and leadership. and leaders almost always are like, oh my gosh, we had no idea. The ahas are just enormous. So you don't just go out. And hopefully it sets a good stage for, hey, Mr. C-level guy, get out of your office once in a while. It's almost like you're training them how to be better leaders. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the understanding that both levels get is one of the side benefits. There's a lot of longer-term organizational and psychological benefits and behavioral benefits that come from value stream mapping. than just the results. Exactly. All right. Chapter four, designing the future state. Yeah, so this was tricky. We didn't know how far to go with this because obviously there are books and books written on every different countermeasure or solution that you could use. And so what we did with this is we just gave people a framework for how to think about the future state, but we don't go into detail, for example, of how to balance with tack time and how do you decide exactly how to error proof. point you're just discovering that you have errors and you need to error-proof. So it's a book that gives three different categories of questions. and we do more than just the eight questions or seven questions that's in Learning to See. We have, I forget how many questions, but it's in the 20s. So there are lots of questions and the more complex the environment, the more you have to consider more questions. Right, right. Okay. And chapter five, which I think is possibly my biased opinion, the most important, developing the transformation plan. Right. So value stream maps are only a means. To an end and the end is results and so if you have beautifully done value stream maps all over walls and nothing is happening to transform the work then what's the point right wallpaper. So the transformation plan the way we do it is it's a you know Excel tool that has line items for every Kaizen burst on the future state and every line item has an owner and we have a Gantt ish chart that we use and you know they don't have to use ours they can do their own plans but. On ours, it's beginning date and end date. And then it has a little status column that auto-populates color codes, how far along you are. So that plan becomes the PDCA, PDSA, Plan, Do, Study, Adjust cycle of, okay, these are all experiments, right? And so you're doing many experiments within the plan. And as you're going through and getting results, then you update the plan and that becomes the discussion point of, do we? Do we go ahead and go ahead and implement what we thought we needed to based on the future state map, given that now conditions may have changed? So it's not a plan sent in cement. It's a plan that you're constantly looking at and re-evaluating. Helping the organization actually make that transformation. Got it. Got it. All right. Chapter 6, Achieving Transformation. That's about how to get stickiness, how to get it to stick and not slip back. And one of the things we suggest there is that without a single owner over an entire value stream, it's very difficult to get the value stream. being viewed and managed and monitored and measured consistently in a way that doesn't allow it to start slipping back or start deviating from whatever the target condition was. So we suggest a value stream manager and it's a pretty tough thing for the average very functionally siloed organization with a org chart that's set in stone to even consider having this one person that crosses over those functions that is the leader and the one that doesn't dictate anything, but they're the ones that are responsible for how work is flowing across a large swath of the enterprise. And so that value stream manager role is critical. Got it. Now, there's several different appendix sections here in the book, value stream icons, outpatient imaging. What's going on with these? Yeah, so we had a very difficult decision deciding. whether throughout the book to show different kinds of maps for different industries, different types of work and all of that, or whether to have a kind of industry neutral or industry agnostic map that shows how to construct it when you're doing the mechanics part of it. We opted finally for this anonymous kind of map, an agnostic map, that is... for any value stream. You mean not Acme stamping? No, no. Isn't that what it's called? Yeah, Acme stamping. Making mirrors, wasn't it? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Because you'll see someone in healthcare be like, I don't relate to Acme stamping. I don't make mirrors. And you know, there's a lot you can learn from other industries' maps. But we wanted to get rid of that kind of resistance up front. So what we did in the appendices is we put samples of very many different maps so that people can see something a little closer to their industry. and say, oh, okay, there's a healthcare one, there's a manufacturing one, there's a software development one, you know, that type of thing. That's great. So hopefully we pulled it off. Okay, so Karen, what would you do differently? If you had to write this book again, what would you do differently? Yeah, that's a good question. So every author, I think, if they're honest, will tell you that the minute the book goes to press, you have these head-slapping moments. You're like, ah, I wish I would have included this. And then when readers start sending in comments and questions and things, you start realizing. that if only you had another two months, you could perhaps finish the book. One of my editors always said, you never finish a book, you just turn it in. So one of the things that we realize now from some questions we're getting that would have been nice to have at least a footnote on is, for example, lead time treatment in manufacturing versus the office and service world. There's a little different way that you handle lead time and WIP, work in process, on the map, something technical, but it's important. Because people who learn from learning to see are now seeing us suggesting a different way for lead time in the information environments that are making them go like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? So I blogged about it last week in order to get that clarification out there. And I'll continue blogging as people ask these great questions. So we'll link to your blog article, too. Okay, great. In this video. Great. Yeah, so that's one example of something. And then the one thing that I think, you know, you never know how to start a book. But I just had a client go through value stream mapping. And this was probably one of the most successful value stream mapping activities I've ever facilitated, in large part because of the team they put together, very high level. This is all projected, but I think they have a very good shot of this. They're projecting that they're going to shorten their lead time from 17 months to 7 months, from PO to delivery. They're going to free up the equivalent of 23 FTEs in the amount of process time they're reducing, getting waste and annoying rework out of the process, the value stream. And they're going to, what was the third thing? It was lead time, process time. Oh, they're freeing up $25 million in working capital per year because of being able to bill more quickly. Sure. Huge results. And I don't think that the average value stream yields those kinds of results, but I don't think we were as clear in the beginning that, again, this is not process mapping. This is big organizational transformation. Material and information. Yeah, and it's organization-wide transformation so that you can get huge quantifiable results. I don't think we did quite as good a job as I wish we would have done on that. So last question. Aside from everyone, who should buy this book? Yeah, it's a good question. And maybe who shouldn't buy this book? Is there anyone? That's a difficult question to ask an author. I think someone who's already highly proficient in value stream mapping, in real value stream mapping, wouldn't need to buy the book necessarily. Unless they just, you know, sometimes once you're an expert in something or proficient in something, it's worth going back just to learn. I mean, I'd like to think, I've done hundreds of value stream maps and I'd like to think I'm pretty good at it. And I know there's definitely wisdom in here that I was like, hmm, it's good. Yeah, there's always a different way to think about things. So we have two markets. One is the practitioner that is leading, facilitating value stream mapping. And the other market are leaders. And we have an executive summary guide that's the pages that are critical for leaders to read. Because a lot of the people that come to us say, you know, we want to do this, but we can't get our vice presidents to even, you know, come to the table and map with us. Right. And so we need to get the book in those hands of why they should be involved and get them to understand this is a strategic level. improvement design. This isn't tactical, this is strategic. And so that would be an audience that we would love to have. Alright, so I guess you can buy it everywhere books are sold. Everywhere. Alright, and we're going to have a link to it here next to this video, so highly recommend it. Karen, thank you. Thank you so much, Ron. Thank you very much. Alright, take care.

But really, we're trying to provide the value of letting you know what these books are all about. And then if you want to buy it, great. And if you don't, that's fine too. To start, we're going to meet with our friend Karen Martin.

Thank you so much for having me here, Ron. Many of you have seen Karen already. We've done some interviews. I was in Toronto at the AME conference.

But Karen is actually here in our studios here in Fort Worth. So what we're going to start with is your latest book, Karen, Values for Mapping, and How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation. And... Mike Osterling is your co-author.

Yes. Okay. So what I want to start with though is, you know, Gemba Academy obviously has a value stream mapping course and many of the folks here watching this video are probably familiar with Learning to See, which is, I guess, the original Bible of value stream mapping written by John Shook and Mike Rother from the Lean Enterprise Institute. Great book.

What I wanted to start with... is the first kind of, I don't know, what do you call these? The blurbs.

Blurbs on the back of the book here from John Shook, who is the chairman and CEO of the Lean Enterprise Institute and author of Learning to See. Yes. Okay. Says value stream mapping has evolved from its roots as a tool used by geeks to reimagine and reconfigure manufacturing operations to a process to enable deep organizational intervention and transformation with value stream mapping.

Karen Martin and Mike Osterling provide an outstanding guide for practitioners engaged in the challenging work of improving the horizontal flow of value across organizations. So it's pretty incredible that the guy who wrote the original Bible on value stream mapping wrote such nice things. So first question before we get into the details of the book. book, Karen, why did you write this book and why should anyone read it if they've read Learning to See?

Yeah, good question. So we love Learning to See. We both learned from Learning to See. That's how we learned to map.

One thing that we've noticed since Learning to See was released is that the office service and knowledge work world. didn't seem to connect with it quite as much as manufacturing did. Yeah.

There are in fact some nuances. I mean, it's mainly the same way you go about mapping a value stream, but there are some nuances that are critical. So that's one reason. The other thing is that we see a lot of a lot of value stream maps, so-called value stream maps, that aren't really value stream maps.

And so we thought it was time to kind of rethink and remind people that maybe knew our Talena, maybe didn't even read Learning to See, because it was 1999 when that came out. Gosh, not long ago. Yeah, yeah. Long time.

So what a value stream map really is and how to, I liken it to a Ferrari. If you keep the Ferrari in the garage, then it's not going to be very happy. And if you take it out on 35 mile an hour roads, you'll get some benefit.

But if you let that thing roll on an open highway, then that's where the Ferrari shines. And value stream mapping can be that same thing for organizations. Nice, nice.

So let's just kind of walk through the book. These videos are going to be kind of short. Who wrote these? the introduction. Did you guys write that yourselves?

Yeah, we wrote it ourselves. The book, we didn't have a preface or a prologue, sometimes people call it. Yeah. But yeah, we wrote it all.

Well, I think what might be helpful is just to kind of go through each chapter. So there's six chapters, and we're going to get some shots of the book here that we'll cut in here. So that is stream management.

It's chapter one, and it's 26 pages. So what's going on, and what's the high-level elevator speech for chapter one? Yeah, so chapter one is all about about what a value stream really is and what it is not.

And so a lot of people get confused between process level mapping and value stream mapping. So that is getting people very clear on how big we're talking about across an organization and why to map. So it's a little bit about the why and the what is it, and then the how comes after that. OK.

All right. Chapter two, setting the stage and enabling success. Yes, so most organizations die fine, don't do proper planning for. for value stream mapping.

We very much believe in the use of a very formal charter, and the charter's used to scope it. It's used for team formation, and you don't form the team, by the way, until it's properly scoped. It's used as a communication tool, a consensus-building tool. That's another. The power of charters that are properly socialized is that you get everyone understanding before you even begin why you're even doing this.

What problems are we trying to solve? So that chapter really centers on development of the charter and socializing the charter. Now, it's been a while since I have read the book.

And there was a section. in here, I can't remember exactly where it was, where it talked about the team. And there was one thing that was kind of an aha moment for me. And...

I wanted to explore, you wrote about the fact that team member selection for the value stream map helped me out. It shouldn't necessarily be the front line workers. Right, right.

Talk a little bit about that. I think that was in this chapter, wasn't it? Yes, it is.

Thank you for asking that question. It's vital. So a lot of value stream maps are being done by operators and team leads and things like that. And while there's some benefit in that because they're more knowledgeable about the current state, The problem is they don't have the authority to authorize the kinds of future state improvements that are big. Right.

And so we've played around with team formation for, you know, since 1999. Yeah. And we believe that you do better by biasing the team toward leadership, so heavily leadership-oriented. And I mean as high as you can. So one thing we say in the book is go as high as you can except as low as you need to. So most of my teams have vice presidents on them and sometimes C-level.

And because, again, the future state is something where if you're just a manager or a front-line person, you may not be able to say, hey, yeah, let's cut this functional area out of the value stream altogether. Let's cross-train these two functional areas to do this work instead of having a handoff with a delay. Let's, you know, rethink how we even launch this product. You know, that's big things. What are your thoughts, though, on having some...

Also having some frontline folks in there, do you do that as well? We do if they have the right composition. So one thing to think about is in the future state, you're usually talking about some pretty big organizational changes if you're using it as the Ferrari. And so if you have frontline people in the team, they have to be pretty mature and able to handle paradigms, big organizational paradigms being challenged.

Some of the future state discussions and current state discussions can get, you know, a little tricky where you're talking about maybe some customer problems and things like that. So if you have lower level people on the team, they have to be able to handle those kinds of conversations. Or my job might change.

Right, right, right. Who moved my cheese, right? Right, yeah. You see the new book that's out, it's I moved your cheese. Oh, really?

Really? No, I have not seen that. I moved your cheese. Oh, very cool.

I wanted to check that out. I have not seen that. Okay. All right.

All right. So chapter three is understanding the current state. And that looks like it's a pretty meaty chapter.

Yeah. So close to 50 pages. Yeah. That's when we get into.

the mechanics of mapping, the actual how to, you know, on a wall with 36 inch wide paper and post-its and markers at hand, what do you do? And so that's where we talk about the frontline engagement and how walking the value stream or going to the GEMBA is the proper way to get that frontline involvement. So what's different about your approach there to learning to see, because obviously learning to see is very prescriptive as well.

Nothing. It's very much the same as far as going to the GEMBA at this stage. The office is service world just aren't used to doing that. And so we're trying to push that message that even if it's a value stream that crosses several buildings and seas and seas of cubicles, it still is valuable to go out and walk the value stream because you get insights you'll never get sitting in a conference room.

And asking the front lines for the questions and asking them for some of the metrics that we use, they're the experts, right? And that going to the GAMBA is such a bonding experience between the front lines and leadership. and leaders almost always are like, oh my gosh, we had no idea.

The ahas are just enormous. So you don't just go out. And hopefully it sets a good stage for, hey, Mr. C-level guy, get out of your office once in a while.

It's almost like you're training them how to be better leaders. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And the understanding that both levels get is one of the side benefits. There's a lot of longer-term organizational and psychological benefits and behavioral benefits that come from value stream mapping. than just the results. Exactly.

All right. Chapter four, designing the future state. Yeah, so this was tricky.

We didn't know how far to go with this because obviously there are books and books written on every different countermeasure or solution that you could use. And so what we did with this is we just gave people a framework for how to think about the future state, but we don't go into detail, for example, of how to balance with tack time and how do you decide exactly how to error proof. point you're just discovering that you have errors and you need to error-proof.

So it's a book that gives three different categories of questions. and we do more than just the eight questions or seven questions that's in Learning to See. We have, I forget how many questions, but it's in the 20s.

So there are lots of questions and the more complex the environment, the more you have to consider more questions. Right, right. Okay. And chapter five, which I think is possibly my biased opinion, the most important, developing the transformation plan. Right.

So value stream maps are only a means. To an end and the end is results and so if you have beautifully done value stream maps all over walls and nothing is happening to transform the work then what's the point right wallpaper. So the transformation plan the way we do it is it's a you know Excel tool that has line items for every Kaizen burst on the future state and every line item has an owner and we have a Gantt ish chart that we use and you know they don't have to use ours they can do their own plans but. On ours, it's beginning date and end date. And then it has a little status column that auto-populates color codes, how far along you are.

So that plan becomes the PDCA, PDSA, Plan, Do, Study, Adjust cycle of, okay, these are all experiments, right? And so you're doing many experiments within the plan. And as you're going through and getting results, then you update the plan and that becomes the discussion point of, do we?

Do we go ahead and go ahead and implement what we thought we needed to based on the future state map, given that now conditions may have changed? So it's not a plan sent in cement. It's a plan that you're constantly looking at and re-evaluating.

Helping the organization actually make that transformation. Got it. Got it. All right. Chapter 6, Achieving Transformation.

That's about how to get stickiness, how to get it to stick and not slip back. And one of the things we suggest there is that without a single owner over an entire value stream, it's very difficult to get the value stream. being viewed and managed and monitored and measured consistently in a way that doesn't allow it to start slipping back or start deviating from whatever the target condition was. So we suggest a value stream manager and it's a pretty tough thing for the average very functionally siloed organization with a org chart that's set in stone to even consider having this one person that crosses over those functions that is the leader and the one that doesn't dictate anything, but they're the ones that are responsible for how work is flowing across a large swath of the enterprise.

And so that value stream manager role is critical. Got it. Now, there's several different appendix sections here in the book, value stream icons, outpatient imaging. What's going on with these?

Yeah, so we had a very difficult decision deciding. whether throughout the book to show different kinds of maps for different industries, different types of work and all of that, or whether to have a kind of industry neutral or industry agnostic map that shows how to construct it when you're doing the mechanics part of it. We opted finally for this anonymous kind of map, an agnostic map, that is...

for any value stream. You mean not Acme stamping? No, no. Isn't that what it's called?

Yeah, Acme stamping. Making mirrors, wasn't it? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Because you'll see someone in healthcare be like, I don't relate to Acme stamping. I don't make mirrors. And you know, there's a lot you can learn from other industries' maps. But we wanted to get rid of that kind of resistance up front. So what we did in the appendices is we put samples of very many different maps so that people can see something a little closer to their industry.

and say, oh, okay, there's a healthcare one, there's a manufacturing one, there's a software development one, you know, that type of thing. That's great. So hopefully we pulled it off. Okay, so Karen, what would you do differently? If you had to write this book again, what would you do differently?

Yeah, that's a good question. So every author, I think, if they're honest, will tell you that the minute the book goes to press, you have these head-slapping moments. You're like, ah, I wish I would have included this.

And then when readers start sending in comments and questions and things, you start realizing. that if only you had another two months, you could perhaps finish the book. One of my editors always said, you never finish a book, you just turn it in.

So one of the things that we realize now from some questions we're getting that would have been nice to have at least a footnote on is, for example, lead time treatment in manufacturing versus the office and service world. There's a little different way that you handle lead time and WIP, work in process, on the map, something technical, but it's important. Because people who learn from learning to see are now seeing us suggesting a different way for lead time in the information environments that are making them go like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what?

So I blogged about it last week in order to get that clarification out there. And I'll continue blogging as people ask these great questions. So we'll link to your blog article, too. Okay, great. In this video.

Great. Yeah, so that's one example of something. And then the one thing that I think, you know, you never know how to start a book. But I just had a client go through value stream mapping. And this was probably one of the most successful value stream mapping activities I've ever facilitated, in large part because of the team they put together, very high level.

This is all projected, but I think they have a very good shot of this. They're projecting that they're going to shorten their lead time from 17 months to 7 months, from PO to delivery. They're going to free up the equivalent of 23 FTEs in the amount of process time they're reducing, getting waste and annoying rework out of the process, the value stream.

And they're going to, what was the third thing? It was lead time, process time. Oh, they're freeing up $25 million in working capital per year because of being able to bill more quickly.

Sure. Huge results. And I don't think that the average value stream yields those kinds of results, but I don't think we were as clear in the beginning that, again, this is not process mapping.

This is big organizational transformation. Material and information. Yeah, and it's organization-wide transformation so that you can get huge quantifiable results.

I don't think we did quite as good a job as I wish we would have done on that. So last question. Aside from everyone, who should buy this book? Yeah, it's a good question.

And maybe who shouldn't buy this book? Is there anyone? That's a difficult question to ask an author. I think someone who's already highly proficient in value stream mapping, in real value stream mapping, wouldn't need to buy the book necessarily.

Unless they just, you know, sometimes once you're an expert in something or proficient in something, it's worth going back just to learn. I mean, I'd like to think, I've done hundreds of value stream maps and I'd like to think I'm pretty good at it. And I know there's definitely wisdom in here that I was like, hmm, it's good. Yeah, there's always a different way to think about things.

So we have two markets. One is the practitioner that is leading, facilitating value stream mapping. And the other market are leaders. And we have an executive summary guide that's the pages that are critical for leaders to read. Because a lot of the people that come to us say, you know, we want to do this, but we can't get our vice presidents to even, you know, come to the table and map with us.

Right. And so we need to get the book in those hands of why they should be involved and get them to understand this is a strategic level. improvement design.

This isn't tactical, this is strategic. And so that would be an audience that we would love to have. Alright, so I guess you can buy it everywhere books are sold.

Everywhere. Alright, and we're going to have a link to it here next to this video, so highly recommend it. Karen, thank you. Thank you so much, Ron.

Thank you very much. Alright, take care.

Transcript for:Introducing Value Stream Mapping Insights

Transcript for:
Introducing Value Stream Mapping Insights