Question

Write a 1,050- to 1400-word paper that evaluates a continuous process improvement plan for a selected organization.

Address the following in your paper:

Explain the JIT philosophy.

Explain the metrics and processes that you will use to monitor and sustain planned improvements for the organization.

Develop metrics to quantify the level of improvement needed in your selected processes.

Compare and contrast various measurement techniques that can be used to measure and sustain the new To-Be process.

Select one or two measurement techniques, and describe why they were selected for this organization.

Describe Value Stream Mapping and how it can be used to improve the To-Be Process.

Evaluate the most important parts of the Value Stream Mapping.

Recommend ongoing processes that will benefit the organization.

Analyze how the organization can sustain continuous improvement by using the new, improved processes.

Cite at least three references.

Answer 1

Establishing a process is the most important step to be taken for any industry because without a defined process everything becomes a mess and nothing goes in a systematic way. But there is always a scope of improvement in any of the process and in today’s market scenario none of the organization can sustain in the market with the market share without improving their process. Let us take a reference of a manufacturing industry.

It was a concept before that before any item gets manufactured the organization wanted to have all the raw materials to be present at their premises to ensure smooth flow of manufacturing process. They wanted to keep a huge inventory for that and in order to do that they used to request all the suppliers to deliver their items before at least 7 days prior to manufacture.

But there are many drawbacks in that process. Some of the raw materials get wasted due to long inventory period, some of the parts are over ordered, the organization need to maintain a huge inventory and keep a big place and many people for maintaining the inventory.

This process was improved and the new concept took place is called JIT (Just in time). This concept says that bring the raw materials just before they are needed but this method demands that the forecast process should be very good in order to bring the demand accurately and at correct time. This method was brought in by Toyota Production System (TPS). Using this there are many benefits the organization is enjoying and a lot of cost and place are saved. This in turn reduce the cost of Production and the increases the net profit for the organization. And the organization can give more discounts to the product without hampering the net profit which brings more market share.

There are different metrics and processes are available in order to measure and maintain the constant and continuous improvement in the process one of them is SMART goal and Metrics

SMART GOALS AND METRICS

	Goals	Metrics
S stands for SPECIFIC	Is the outcome or the result clearly stated?	Is the metrics clear and easy to understand?
M is for MEASURABLE	Can the result be measured?	Is the data readily available?
A is ACTIONABLE	Can the goal be achieved?	Can it be influenced to change the result?
R is RELEVANT	Does the goal is linked to the business strategy?	Does the metrics measures what are the important things?
T is TIMELY	Is it a completion of the goal clearly defined?	How often the data are needed?

The above metrics is self-explanatory and it shows how the SMART method works. All the goals of the organization should be specific, measurable, actionable relevant to the organization strategy and time defined. If any one of the parameter is not properly answered or defined it can be a problem for the organization in future.

There are many measurement techniques available, we are discussing 2 of them here.

Benefit Measurement Methods and Constrained Optimization Methods

Benefit measurement method is a technique or method of selecting a process or project which is based on present value of estimated cash outflow and inflow. There are many techniques which are used to in benefit measurement like Benefit/cost ratio, economic model, scoring model, net present value internal rate of return, opportunity cost etc..

In all the improvement process is basically removing the waste and they are called Lean tools. We do all the improvements without hampering the outcome and what we do is mainly try to remove the extra cost or extra manpower or extra time. One of the important tool for this is Value Stream Mapping.

Value Stream mapping is a tool in lean which is mainly documented using a slow diagram with high level of details process in every step. Many of the organizations who use lean use Value stream mapping. This is a tool which removes the waste and reduces the cycle time for the process and implement the Process improvement.

In this Value stream mapping we analyze the current state and design a future state for all the events in series for a product or service from the beginning of it to the end. This method is important for any organization because it helps the management to understand the process through the value stream.