Now, scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA are digitizing value stream mapping together with the Stuttgart-based software provider iFAKT. This should make it possible to carry out this proven optimization method in the future with significantly less effort and almost in real time.
For more than 40 years, value stream mapping has always been carried out in the same way: an external service provider or an internal planning engineer walks through all the production stations with a notepad and stopwatch, interviews employees and measures how long each work step takes. These notes are then used to create an overall overview by hand, showing each individual production process on a DIN A3 sheet of paper. Only when the actual state of production is known in detail does it become clear where processes can be optimized.
Collecting the data and preparing the complete overview could soon take much less time. In the future, software will automatically retrieve all production data from the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and other available data sources in near real time and present it clearly. Producing companies, which until now have usually carried out a value stream analysis at most once a year, could thus respond more quickly to changes in the production system. This is because the production system often changes several times in the course of a year: new products are manufactured, different raw materials are processed and perhaps additional machines are purchased.
Software could also apply design rules in the future
“For now, however, it remains the task of a professional production planner to interpret the value stream mapping and apply the eight common design rules to it.”
- Markus Böhm from the Factory Planning and Production Management department
