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Showing posts with label Value Stream. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Value Stream. Show all posts

Friday, November 16, 2012

Change is Best when it Evolves

I’ve realized that I want to focus my own business a lot more on “How can we help you manage change?” rather than “How can we deliver you a new process solution?” because I often feel the existing process probably isn’t that broken. Understanding how to tweak around with it and introduce change in a sustainable way is much more likely to deliver success. It will have a higher success rate, higher chance of a successful return, rather than pursue the shiny object and see it crash and burn. – David Anderson (excerpt from the podcast below)

David has recently teamed up with Bob Lewis (Bob is a prolific author, his latest book is Bare Bones Project Management) to present a 2-day workshop on Business Change Management. This will include topics specific to Agile and Lean transition initiatives. They examine the source of organizational resistance to change, describe the seven components of an effective business change management plan, and show how to go beyond a “Managed Transition” to achieve both Evolutionary Change and discontinuous, “fork lift” change. More information on the workshop can be found at Business Change Management..

Workshop Dates:

  • Washington DC – October 29-30, 2012
  • Los Angeles, CA December 3-4, 2012

The word cloud below is from the transcription of the podcast.

change 1

Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Download this episode (right click and save)

or go to the Business901 iTunes Store.

Mobile Version

David Anderson is a thought leader in managing effective technology development. He leads a consulting, training and publishing business at  David J, Anderson & Associates. David may be best known for his book, Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business.

Past encounters with David:

Thursday, June 21, 2012

An Uncommon Way of thinking about Service Design

Service Design Thinking: Anne Morriss, the best‑selling co‑author of Uncommon Service says,

We live in a world where lots of organizations want to deliver great service. We work with managers all the time, who are committed to it. Customers, as we know, are hungry for it, and yet, our service experiences are still overwhelmingly negative. In pursuing this question, what became clear is that past excellence is not necessarily intuitive. It's not about trying harder, deciding the customer is always right. It's more about making careful design choices and very deliberate trade‑offs. There are some surprising rules and pitfalls along the way. We wanted to get some of those insights out in the world because we think, basically, the world is ready for it.

This is an excerpt from the Business901 podcast with Anne. We discuss the four universal truths outlined in the book for delivering uncommon service:

  1. You can’t be good at everything.
  2. Someone has to pay for it.
  3. It’s not your employees’ fault.
  4. You must manage your customers

Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Download Here  or go to the Business901 iTunes Store.

The book’s website is an excellent resource and I encourage you to take the survey and utilize the Service Design Tool located there. This is a very challenging perspective for most of us. However, I think you will find the information to be well researched and presented in a compelling fashion.

Related Information:
The Lean Business Practices of a Deli
Has Lean Thinking fallen short on the Demand Side?
Will someone pay for Intangible Value?
In love with your products more than your customers?

Friday, April 27, 2012

Find the Right Customer at the Right time

How do you generate a bunch of prospects that have low risk with a high earning potential. This is what most companies seek and should streamline their organizations to take advantage of these types of orders. It is not about disregarding anyone product/market group even a high risk and a low potential. It is about matching these opportunities with the Right Customer and at the Right Time. Understanding this is key. Orders designated high risk and low potential with the Wrong Customer are selectively chosen and not even considered in your peak production. Taking a high risk job – low potential may be the right call with the Right Customer in the off season. Easy, Hard

I often discuss being Customer Centric which not only a fantastic business opportunity but a requirement going forward. Even though most of us claim to be customer centric, the majority of us still think in a product centric manner. Why change this? When you are product centric, you have a product for everyone and standard list price. It is the way you think. When you are customer centric, you find the right customer for the right product at the right price – huge difference. But don’t think in applying your product (inventory and new products), think about product/markets. Think outside–in versus inside-out. If you think in broader terms before zeroing down you can adjust offerings and pricing accordingly.

As an example, you can sell more services, bundle offerings and as a result quit selling products as a commodity. You increase potential, looking for ways to be innovative and work with customers that will allow this – “your right customer”.

This way of thinking does not mean you wing it or you do not understand your cost. If anything you need to understand them better. The risk becomes smaller, because your internal processes get better. That is the carrot to get better internally and what will sustain improvements.

You will also grow as the definition of the Right Customer broadens. A result of understanding your prospects/customers wants and desires better which happens through increased knowledge transfer. A better definition may be that you achieve a better understanding of the work to be done which spurs innovation and design.

Related Information:
Value Chain Thinking is not Rocket Science
The Death of List Price
Customer Flow is not Linear or Controllable
An Appreciative Look at the World

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

A Collaborative approach to Value Stream Mapping

Value Stream Mapping has been a practice that was first introduced in the book Learning to See: Value Stream Mapping to Add Value and Eliminate MUDA by Mike Rother and John Shook. This groundbreaking workbook, which has introduced the value-stream mapping tool to thousands of people around the world, breaks down the important concepts of value-stream mapping into an easily grasped format. Dan Jones and Jim Womack followed that book with Seeing the Whole Value Stream which took the mapping methodology through an improvement process that converted the traditional value stream of isolated operations to a broader view of the entire value stream.LEI_STW_v2_covers1-4:workbook_cover

Recently the co-authors, Womack and Jones in response to feedback asking for examples in other sectors and questions about how to understand supply chain costs more accurately, have added five essays to the book for this new edition. These essays demonstrate how real companies have taken on the challenge of improving their extended value streams working in collaboration with their suppliers and customers.

The new essays for the book are:

  • Spreading value-stream thinking from manufacturers to final customers through service providers—extending the wiper example.
  • Applying extended value-stream thinking to retail—a look at the Tesco story.
  • Learning to use value-stream thinking collaboratively with suppliers and customers.
  • Product costing in value-stream analysis.
  • Seeing and configuring the global value stream.

The one particular essay that stood out to me was Learning to use value-stream thinking collaboratively with suppliers and customers. The objective of this effort was to garner their suppliers and customer in a true collaborative effort to create value. It was the first time any of these five companies had ever viewed a shared value stream. They started with a few modest objectives for improvement. However, it turned into much more than an improvement effort but rather a deeper type of organizational relationship. The reason they cited was that they learned how to communicate with each other. You can view the experience: Video of Matthew Lovejoy's presentation on the Acme Alliance story.

This story exemplifies the power of collaboration and what can be developed from it. Collaboration in a Value Stream Mapping exercise can be a difficult process. You open your doors to all the skeletons you have in the closet for both vendors and customers to see. Most people are surprised by the reactions. It is typically not one of disgust or insecurity but rather a helping hand is extended and many times consideration that certain requirements may not even be needed.

The spirit of this venture serves a valuable insight that co-producing, co-creation and open innovation is not as far-fetched as it may seem. A single Value Stream Mapping process led to four years of increasing engagement. I wonder what would happen is they shorten that iteration a bit?

P.S. If your 1st edition of the book looks like mine, it’s time for the 2nd edition anyway.

Related Information:
Six Sources of Influence in Change
The Difficulty of Mastery = The Difficulty of Lean
Start with Journey Mapping vs Value Stream Mapping
Value Stream Mapping

Sunday, February 5, 2012

What’s new in Business Model Generation? Customer Value Canvas and more

Need a collection of tools to help generate business model ideas! The Business Model Canvas is an analytical tool outlined in the book Business Model Generation. It is a visual template preformatted with the nine blocks of a business model, which allows you to develop and sketch out new or existing business models. This book has sold over 220,000 copies the past two years and has established itself as one of the leading sources of modeling for both startups and established businesses. 

If you're ready to change the rules, you belong to "the business model generation!" Listen to Alex discuss this concept and he latest extensions to the BMGen platform such as the Customer Value Canvas plugin. 

 
Download Podcast: Click and choose options: BMGen or go to the Business901 iTunes Store.

Alex OsterwalderAbout: Dr. Alexander Osterwalder is a sought-after author, speaker, workshop facilitator and adviser on the topic of business model design and innovation. He has established himself as a global thought leader in this area, based on a systematic and practical methodology to achieve business model innovation. Executives and entrepreneurs all over the world apply Dr. Osterwalderʼs approach to strengthen their business model and achieve a competitive advantage through business model innovation. Organizations that use his approach include 3M, Ericsson, IBM, Telenor, Capgemini, Deloitte, Logica, Public Works and Government Services Canada, and many more. 

  • Competitive Advantage Through Business Model Innovation
  • Aligning Business Model Innovation and Information Technology
  • From Business Model to Business Plan
  • Private Banking Business Models - discover, understand, define
  • Business Models in the Media Industry
  • Business Models at the Bottom of the Pyramid
  • Social Entrepreneurship Business models
  • Design Thinking in Business

Alex’s Websites:
http://www.businessmodelalchemist.com
http://businessmodelhub.com/
http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/

Related Information:
Do You Know the Right Job For Your Products?
Lean Canvas for Lean EDCA-PDCA-SDCA
Will Product Managers embrace Open Innovation?
Steve Blank on the Lean Startup at Ann Arbor

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Job-Centric Innovation is Rethinking Customer Needs

Service Innovation requires that shift the focus away from the solution and back to the customer. In the podcast, Service Innovation – Rethinking Customer Needs, my guest Lance Bettencourt discusses how to rethink your approach to the customer’s needs: how the customer defines value in a product or service. This is a transcription of the podcast.

Service Innovation – Rethinking Customer Needs

His book, Service Innovation: How to Go from Customer Needs to Breakthrough Services lays out a road map for developing a winning service strategy.

Related Information:
The Service-dominant Logic of Marketing: Dialog, Debate, And Directions
If all of us need to be marketers, what’s the framework?
7 Principles of Universal Design & Beyond
The Common Thread of Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Marketing

Friday, September 23, 2011

Lean Marketing Board Game Introduction

Following The Lean Startup Principles of Build, Measure, Learn, I am introducing a MVP version of the Lean Marketing Board Game which surprisingly is not based on the Lean Startup but instead my book the Lean Marketing House.  I really don’t teach Build, Measure, Lean and the Pivot, I just stick to the old PDCA cycle. Now granted my Plan–Do-Check–Act (Adapt maybe) do resemble the Build, Measure, Learn – Validate theories of Eric Ries but even though we beat to same drum, we go about it slightly different.

The main difference being is my adaption of viewing Lean as a knowledge building platform and using Service Design or Design Thinking Principles that put the customer at the forefront versus the product or service. My thinking is also firmly rooted in the Service Dominant Logic theories that your product/service has little or no value without the customer. The value comes in the use of your product/service by the customer. Your marketing should be centered on that side of the fence versus internally.

I have put a presentation of the initial steps of the Lean Marketing Board Game in place. My Minimum Viable product, I hope you enjoy.

Lean Marketing Game
View more presentations from Business901

The game will be included in my upcoming Lean Marketing House 28-day Program.

Related Information:
Scaling the Customer Decision Making Process
Gaming can make a better world
Can the customer be front stage in your organization?
Scaling the Customer Decision Making Process

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Training Video for Continuous Improvement

Take note of the individual sub-titles and discuss each section after it is completed. You can have a lot of fun with this and you may get a few surprises. It is actually a good exercise to use for training continuous improvement groups. I was able to actually use it in a webinar.   

About the video: A Total Quality Management training video that our final year class at the University of Edinburgh made in the style of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times. The intention was to teach, teamwork, production line processes, process optimization, defects, quality, and continual improvement 'Kaizen'.

Related Information:
Sustaining Lean using Continuous Improvement: The Toyota Way
Dr. Jeff Liker on PDCA and Lean Culture>
PDCA for Lean Marketing, Knowledge Creation
Understand Scrum, Understand Implementing PDCA

Friday, November 26, 2010

Who has Influenced My Thinking on Flow

Who are your most influential people on a particular subject? I started thinking of this after interviewing Don Reinertsen Tuesday’s Podcast, on the subject of Flow.

In my mind, the founding father on this subject was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (notice in the middle of his last name the word ZEN). I can remember first reading his book and later buying the tape series. I dangerously listened to it on a late night drive home. At one in the morning after driving 400 miles it was tough. That heavy Eastern European accent building a case for FLOW even though an eye opening subject it was not made to keep your eyes open. The secret of course was purchasing ice cream bars along the way!

This is not a resounding introduction to the video below but you may be quite surprised by the video it gives a good over view and if filled with background music from David Brubeck.

 

The subject of Flow is important to the marketing process. Understanding how your Customer flows through the decision making process in buying, becoming a loyal customer and recommending your product is essential. In fact, you lose the most customers when the flow stops or in between stages (Queue) of your marketing process. Understanding your Customer’s Flow should be at the root of all your marketing processes.

When I think of Flow, these our the people/books that have had the most influence on my thinking. Do you have any to add?

Amazon Links:

  1. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
  2. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
  3. Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated
  4. Managing the Design Factory
  5. Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos
  6. Value Stream Mapping for Lean Development: A How-To Guide for Streamlining Time to Market
  7. The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development
  8. Kanban
  9. Personal Kanban(Release Date in November 2010).

Blog Posts:
Constant Feedback makes for Continuous Work Flow
Marketing Kanban Cadence
Agile, Scrum, Kanban, or is it just a Marketing Funnel?
Value Stream Mapping your Marketing
Flow

Friday, October 29, 2010

The Importance of the Value Proposition - Rackham

If you follow my blog you know what a fan I am of SPIN Selling and Neal Rackham. Though I feel the book is getting somewhat dated, Rackham is still offering great advice.

Understanding your Value Proposition from your customers perspective may be the most important strategic advantage you can have as a company. 

Related Posts:
Lean your Marketing by Dominating with Customer Value
Value Stream Mapping differs in Lean Marketing
Using Value Stream Mapping in Lean

Thursday, October 28, 2010

3 ways the brain creates meaning

Information designer Tom Wujec talks through three areas of the brain that help us understand words, images, feelings, connections. In this short talk from TEDU, he asks: How can we best engage our brains to help us better understand big ideas?

Tom Wujec is a Fellow at Autodesk, the makers of design software for engineers, filmmakers, designers. At Autodesk, he has worked on software including SketchBook Pro, PortfolioWall and Maya (which won an Academy Award for its contribution to the film industry). As a Fellow, he helps companies work in the emerging field of business visualization, the art of using images, sketches and infographics to help teams solve complex problems as a group.

Related Info:
Can you be talented enough on your own?
What you can Learn from the Military on Cadence
Kanban Communication

Amazon Link: Five Dysfunctions of a Team Workshop Deluxe Facilitator’s Guide Package

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Uncertainy in your Decision Making

I had great pleasure having Eli Schragenheim on the Business901 Podcast. Eli has been part of the Theory of Constraints movement practically from the beginning. He started working with Dr. Goldratt as a programmer to program a game for adults that would teach them how to think over 25 years ago. During the podcast we dove into the subject of Uncertainy! A great discussion, that affects our everyday life and how it relates to forecasting and even our intuition.Eli Schragenheim

From the Podcast: We cannot really predict the future. We can predict some reasonable range of the future needed to make a decision. This is hard for forecasting. Forecasting is an unbelievably important tool for managers, but again they need to understand what does it mean and what does it contain and how wrong could it be.

In the past 25 years, Eli Schragenheim has taught, spoken at conferences, and consulted in more than 15 countries, including the United States, Canada, India, China, and Japan. He has also developed software simulation tools especially designed to experience the thinking of TOC, and consultant with several application software companies to develop the right TOC functionality in their own packages. Mr. Schragenheim was a partner in the A. Y. Goldratt Institute and is now a Director of Goldratt schools.

He is the author of Management Dilemmas: The Theory of Constraints Approach to Problem Identification and Solutions.  He recently collaborated with William Detmer and Wayne Patterson on the book Supply Chain Management at Warp Speed: Integrating the System from End to End. The new book contains much of the new development of TOC and operations.

You can contact Eli Schrangenheim through his e-mail @ elyakim@netvision.net.il

Business901 Related Information:
Theory of Constraints Roundup
Holistic approach to the Theory of Constraints.
Theory of Constraints Handbook

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Customer Value Lens

In part 2 of this 3 part podcast Mike Dalton the founder of Guided Innovation Group, discussed The Customer Value Len. Mike says, "That means the first thing you have to do is be out in the marketplace, be out with customers, potential customers or new markets and be looking for the problems, the things that they are trying to do that are difficult for them."

In Mikes recent book, Simplifying Innovation: Doubling speed to market and new product profits - with your existing resourceshe discussed the Customer Value Lens and much more. The book was just released in January and has received some good reviews.Simplifying Innovation

“A Theory of Constraints approach to the process of innovation was long overdue. Production, project management, supply chain, and policy constraint analysis have all been comprehensively addressed. But until now, no one has thought to examine the ramifications of constraint theory on the challenge of innovation. Mike Dalton’s novel was worth waiting for. Simplifying Innovation synthesizes innovation best practices and the focusing step framework to create a powerful new application of TOC. Let it stimulate your imagination as it did mine.” –H. William Dettmer, author of Strategic Navigation

“Inside a fascinating business novel, that I literally couldn’t put down, Mike Dalton has created a hands-on field manual to extending the Theory of Constraints to innovation – I only wished I had the benefit of Mike’s insights during my days as an R&D leader in Bell Labs.” –Dr. Matthew W. Sagal, co-author of The Strongest Link

Mike's company, Guided Innovation has created The Guided Innovation System™ , their unique TOC-based approach to rapid innovation improvement is helping companies slash time to market in half and nearly double new product profits.

 

Related Posts:

Value Stream Marketing and the Indirect Marketing Concept

A Simple Exercise to Differentiate Yourself

Design for Lean Six Sigma, The Xerox Way

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Using Excel for Value Stream Mapping Discussion

Systems2win a supplier of Excel Templates for Lean Kaizen Continuous improvement tools has introduced the Value Stream Mapping section of the Lean Starter Toolkit that includes a selection of downloadable templates, videos and Dean Twitterinstructions. This is a free downloadable trial package that covers Value Stream Mapping, and is part of a collection of over twenty templates in the Lean Starter Kit. The Systems2win Word and Excel templates and free online training are relevant to any type of organization pursuing a continuous improvement effort.

I had a chance to catch up with Dean Ziegler, founder of Systems2win and had this discussion about his new Lean Starter kit and more specifically the Value Stream Mapping Templates . Disclaimer: There is a business relationship that exist between Business901 and Systems2win at the time of this writing.

Joe Dager: You use Excel as a drawing tool. Why?

Dean Ziegler: Once someone completes the 13-minute video to learn how to use Excel as a drawing tool – they will wonder why they ever bought Visio. Drawing is the easy part. Excel has all of the drawing capabilities of Visio, but Visio can’t do math. And once your managers get over being enamored with the pretty pictures, they are going to start asking the tough questions that are the entire reason for making a value stream map in the first place. ‘How much will we save? Why are we focusing on this instead of that?’ And that’s when people realize that their entry-level drawing tool doesn’t really answer the questions that a value stream map is intended to answer.

Joe: What if I am new to Excel or even Lean, can I still benefit from your templates?

Dean: If you are new to Excel or the Tools of Lean, Systems2win offers one of the largest collections of on-line training resources free during your trial period. Free online training is one of the strengths behind our product offerings. There are built in support features each and every time you open a document. So we encourage newcomers to use our free training if nothing else to start or expand your Lean Journey.

Joe: If they are just Word and Excel templates, why don’t I just create them?

Dean: We want people to know that many of our Systems2win templates are just plain simple. In the past, we only gave away our most complex templates as trials, but now we’re giving some of the simple ones too. Our best prospect is someone that has already spent several late nights attempting to create a few of their own home-made templates, and can now truly appreciate how much time these save – and how much more professional the end results.

There has been a few discussion that I have participated in on the use of templates, so I thought I would go straight to the horse’s mouth per say. We have an expanded version of this discussion that I will release soon but thought that this was a good viewpoint on the use of templates.

Related Posts:

Value Stream Mapping
Draw your Value Stream Map in Excel

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Power of Visual Thinking in your Visual Workplace

If you follow my blog you know the respect I have for the David Armano and the Logic & Emotion Blog. He had a great blog post on the power of visual thinking and also shared this slideshow presentation. A clear demonstration of visual thinking.

An excerpt from their Blog Post…The Value of Visual Thinking

Educating
So what's the value of visual thinking for business? For starters it can help educate, especially if you are launching a new product, initiative or idea.

Communicating
It doesn't matter if we're talking about consumers or employees — attention is becoming scarce. If you want to communicate something, you need to capture attention and communicate your point quickly.

Training
In the design of business, visual thinking will be key in the design of new processes, systems, and structures. Expect to see the mapping of ecosystems, flows, org charts, social systems and data visualization.

I think Visual Thinking is a powerful tool. For evidence, look at the tools I surround myself with, Value Stream Mapping, The Lean Marketing House and Mindmaps. I believe it is the most effective way to learn. As David said in his last paragraph of the blog cited above: “We're not all visual thinkers (though we all have the potential). However, we are all visual learners. Don't believe me? Simply pay a visit to any grade school and you'll see evidence of it everywhere. "A is for Apple," showing both the letter and a picture of an apple next to it. The cognitive recognition of the image often happens first."

I have an upcoming podcast with Gwendolyn Galsworth of the Visual Workplace. She is author of the book, Visual Workplace/Visual Thinking, a Shingo Prize Winner. Gwendolyn has a fall webinar series on Implementing a Visual Workplace. The next webinar is this Thursday, November 5th. She begins her book by stating: “The technologies of the visual workplace represent a comprehensive strategy for installing vital information as close to the point of use as possible.” Now, when you think of a visual workplace are you on the same page? If not, maybe you should take a look at her book,Visual Workplace, Visual Thinking: Creating Enterprise Excellence Through the Technologies of the Visual Workplace?

 

Monday, October 5, 2009

Deliver NOW

If you want to be successful in today’s market consider using this tag line. What reminded me of this is discussions I have had with Jeff Slater of Sonoco on the Supply Chain, Bob Sproull, author of The Ultimate Improvement Cycle and this recent video on the American Express Open Forum, Delivering What the Customer Wants.

Customers are demanding shorter Supply Chains and more customization. Their trade-off is that they are willing to wait for a very short-on-time delivery and the faith not that the product or service will be perfect, but that it will be supported and corrected if there is a problem.

The internet has made people accustomed to buying things sight unseen if they have trust in the people and organizations behind the product. Does anyone mind when the product says Beta on it? now

However, how can a company make money with customization and supply chains being the 2 biggest drawbacks to efficiencies?  The first thing I would let go of is the word efficiencies. That seems to me an out-dated word still being used by cost accountants. The Theory of Constraints utilizes measurements using the term of Throughput which I believe has a lot more bearing on the health of a company. Most companies also fail to realize that the “asset” of inventory actually penalizes you in your supply chain and typically reduces your time to market. 

Delivering in the Immediate Moment is typically not about production time, it is about policy constraints and having a supporting system in place to support that goal. Building a Value Stream Map can clarify many of these issues. However, first things first, remove the word efficiency and add the word throughput to your vocabulary.

Related Posts:

Theory of Constraints + Lean + Six Sigma = Ultimate Improvement Cycle

Lean Six Sigma applied to Supply Chain

Application of Lean Six Sigma to the Supply Chain

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Building a Lean Healthcare Value Stream

A Lean Healthcare value stream is just as likely as a manufacturer to employ lean concepts such as kanbans, heijunka, jidoka, kaizen, and the couple dozen new words for process improvement that happen to be Japanese words because Henry Ford didn't think of them first. Many or most Lean teachings come from the Toyota Production System - which is why it is common for Lean practitioners to assume that the thing being processed is a physical inventory item (like a car). But it doesn't have to be. Literally 99% of Lean concepts apply to ANY industry.

Top Differences between Lean Manufacturing and Lean Healthcare tools & teachings

  1. If the process you are optimizing does not deal with inventory, then wherever you see the word "inventory" - substitute either the word "patient", or "the thing being processed"
  2. In addition to inventory, buffer and safety resources are more likely to also include: lean healthcare value stream mapping symbols
    1. Overtime
    2. Cross-training and departmental borrowing
    3. Temporaries
    4. Outsourcing
    5. Pre-trained workers available as needed (seasonal, retirees...)
    6. Pre-negotiated availability of extra rooms/beds
    7. Contingency plans
    8. Automation
    9. Stick figure drawing tool for lean healthcare

  3. Value stream mapping symbols and concepts are the same, except for a few unique shapes, such as an ambulance instead of a truck, or a gurney instead of a push cart. Lean Healthcare providers are more likely to use Stick Figure drawings for A3 problem solving.

It is important not to invent your own vocabulary. Just because you sometimes need to substitute the words "patient" or "the thing being processed" when you see the word "inventory" doesn't mean that it is a good idea to start inventing your own (non-Japanese) words for everything else you learn about Lean. You will make it a LOT easier on your people if you teach them the same Lean definitions that are used in every Lean book that has ever been printed - instead of trying to "translate" for them by inventing your own vocabulary.

Used with permission from Systems2win provider of Lean Software Tools for lean process improvement