Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

Too many organizations today suffer from silo-centric behavior and intra-organizational conflict. Yet most don't understand what's holding them back from achieving outstanding performance.

Value stream mapping--an essential but underused methodology--is a proven approach to help you visualize and resolve disconnects, redundancies, and gaps in your value delivery system. More than merely a tool to eliminate operational waste, value stream mapping is a highly effective means to transform leadership thinking, define strategy and priorities, and create customer-centric work flow.

In this detailed guide, business performance improvement experts Karen Martin and Mike Osterling present a practical way to deeply understand how work gets done--in any environment--and how to design improved work systems.

You'll learn how to:

• Prepare and engage your leadership team in the transformation process
• Gain a deep understanding about your current work systems and the related barriers to delivering value
• Design a future state that enables outstanding performance on all fronts
• Adopt the new design and lay the foundation for continued improvement

Whether you are a novice, an experienced improvement practitioner, or a leader, Value Stream Mapping will help you design and operate your business more effectively. And if your organization already uses value stream mapping, this book will help you improve your transformation efforts.

In today's rapid-fire business environment, there are too many problems to be solved and too many opportunities to be leveraged to operate without a highly effective means for accomplishing the important work to be done. Value stream mapping is the missing link in business management and, properly executed, has the power to address many business woes.

About the Authors

Karen Martin is president of The Karen Martin Group, Inc., a firm that specializes in business performance improvement and Lean management practices. She's also the author of the Shingo Research Award–winning The Outstanding Organization, an instructor in the University of California, San Diego's Lean Enterprise program, and an industry advisor to the University of San Diego's Industrial and Systems Engineering program.

Mike Osterling provides support and leadership to organizations on their Lean transformation journey. Prior to consulting, Mike played a key internal role in Schneider Electric's Lean transformation during the 1990s. He is the cofounder of San Diego State University's Lean Enterprise program and continues to teach at SDSU and other universities.