From the course: Stay Lean with Kanban

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What is a value stream map?

What is a value stream map?

From the course: Stay Lean with Kanban

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What is a value stream map?

- Many organizations think of kanban as a way to replace their existing processes, but kanban stays true to lean manufacturing. It's not a prescriptive method like project management, instead, kanban just tries to expose your problems. It puts spotlight on inefficient processes. It starts by trying to understand why things are the way they are. What are the justifications and ideas behind your existing process? That's why at the very beginning of using kanban, you should start with your current process. You'll want to create a process map of how work goes through your organization. This is also called mapping the value stream. When you map your value stream, you're looking at all the steps in your process to figure out which one adds the greatest value. In most organizations, this is a difficult thing to do. In fact, most processes just evolve over time. Often, organizations don't consider the cost of following their process, instead, they just focus on how it might just solve their…

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