Quality Value Stream Mapping

TLDR

Manufacturing firms face cost, lead‑time, and quality challenges that require integrating inspection processes into production chains, yet existing tools like Value Stream Mapping cannot adequately address the placement of testing activities. The article aims to enable identification of effective testing equipment, strategies, and quality control loops through a new approach. Quality Value Stream Mapping extends VSM by visualizing, analyzing, and designing quality assurance measures, demonstrated on an electronic industry value chain.

Abstract

Companies in the manufacturing industry today are faced with increasing challenges with respect to cost effectiveness, lead time and quality of the production system. Dealing with these contradictory goals, an important task is the selection of suitable solutions for the integration of inspection processes within the process chain, which are necessary to ensure the required production quality. For this, supportive and easily applicable planning techniques are required to analyze and design the configuration of a respective process chain. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a state of the art tool which is very often used for this by professionals. It, however, is not capable of addressing the issue of a suitable integration of testing processes within the process chain. Yet, this provides valuable potential to facilitate the identification of effective testing equipment, testing strategies and quality control loops. Therefore, in this article an innovative approach called Quality Value Stream Mapping (QVSM) is presented. Based on the design elements of VSM, it provides a suitable tool for the visualization, analysis and design of quality assurance measures within process chains in manufacturing. The implementation of the developed approach is exemplarily shown for a complex value chain of a manufacturer in the electronic industry.