Customers are more demanding than ever and supply chain processes must be fast, flexible and productive to stay competitive. Products and services are often highly customized and must be delivered quickly and at the best cost. To achieve a fast, flexible and productive supply chain organizations must constantly identify and eliminate non-value added steps in their processes.

Supply Velocity uses the Lean tool, Process Flow Mapping, to identify and eliminate non value added steps from processes. Unlike “brown-paper” exercises or re-engineering, process flow mapping “visually” captures processes as they currently are, provides tools to identify the non-value added steps in the “current state” process, then provides the structure and methodologies to eliminate the non-value added steps and create the improved “future state” process. The team’s effort working on their Process Flow Map creates a common understanding, improves communications, promotes organizational alignment and reduces points of conflict. The future state map, which is the old current state map with the non-value added work removed, becomes a highly effective communications and training tool. Any business process, from order entry to creating invoices, can be process flow mapped. You can expect faster processes with less labor required to fulfill customer demands.

Supply Chain Process Streamlining – Implementation Plan

1. Map the current state
   • Current performance
   • Benchmark performance
   • Develop performance scorecards for all departments
2. Identify each step as:
   • Value added to the customer
   • Non-value added but required for internal operations
   • Non-value added and should be eliminated
3. Prioritize all non-value added steps by:
   • Benefit (high, medium or low)
   • Difficulty to eliminate (high, average, easy)
4. Create action items to eliminate non-value added steps
5. Create the future state process flow map, incorporating all improvements