Value Stream Management

When lean manufacturing matures within the company, there is a need to manage the value stream. Thus a manager would be assigned with the profit and lost responsibility related to the value stream. The growth and improvement strategies revolve around the value stream because it provides the visibility for managing continuous improvement.

The lean company strives for simplicity of operation. Thus within a lean organization there would be only three or four value streams with a clear cut line of responsibility. A traditional organization would have a complex organization chart, hundreds of cost centers and thousands of transactions to keep track of people. It is obvious that managing with the value stream perspective really simplifies management.

For each value stream there would be a continuous improvement (CI) team to review the value stream performance measurement and make improvements on time. The CI team within the value stream can see the entire flow of the work, thus the improvement benefits the whole system rather than a single process.