Value Stream Mapping to Reduce Lead Time and Improve Throughput Time in a Manufacturing Organization : A Review

In today’s competitive business world, companies focus on small lead times, low costs and high customer satisfaction to survive in the business. Lean manufacturing is used for maximizing resource utilization through minimization of waste. As waste is eliminated, quality of the product improves, while production time and cost are reduced. To survive, an organization, either manufacturing or service-oriented, may ultimately depend on its ability to systematically and continuously respond to the changes for enhancing the product value. For the successful implementation of lean, the organization has to focus on all the aspects such as value stream mapping, cellular manufacturing, inventory control, just-in-time, Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED), 5S, Kanban, poka-yoke, total productive maintenance, takt time, group technology, inventory, redesigning cells, multi-process handling and standardized work. The main focus is to reduce the cost and eliminate the non-value added activities through application of management philosophy which focuses on identification and elimination of waste. In this paper, an overview of different lean elements is presented and suggestion is provided to reduce the lead time and increase the throughput time