A Golden Opportunity to Move Forward
AT SOME POINT, the COVID-19 pandemic will be behind us, whether that’s due to a vaccine, a two-minute test, or herd immunity. But if you want to thrive in the post-COVID world, you’ve got to start working on operational improvements now. After all, if you’re walking to the starting line while your competitors are already settled into the blocks, you’ll never catch up.
Value-Stream Mapping is a tool that can help you become faster and more nimble — both now, and in World 2.0. Value-stream maps (VSMs) show both the material and the information flow in any kind of end-to-end process, such as ‘order to cash’, or ‘new product to introduction’. By revealing the handoffs that take place along the way, the delays, and the defects within and between processes, VSMs serve as an X-ray into the otherwise invisible workings of your operations, enabling you to address long-hidden problems that make an organization slow and unresponsive.
Two of my clients — a mid-sized manufacturer of girl’s dresses, and
