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Lean is both a business improvement philosophy and a collection of well proven tools to improve
processes. In other words it is an approach that seeks to
eliminate waste, and thereby improve quality, productivity, and
customer satisfaction, as well as reduce costs. And SmartDraw includes a variety of easy to
build diagrams and visuals that are essential for Lean initiatives.
Identifying the value stream – the sequence of activities required to design, produce,
and provide goods and services - is usually one of the first steps
in the Lean process. For this you’ll need a Value Stream Map. A Value
Stream Map can help your organization get a better sense of your business and how it
works by mapping out the process, the timeline of activities and
the flow of information. Adding the steps in your Process Map is easy
and automatic in SmartDraw. And the values you add automatically correspond with the
Timeline, calculating the Value Added Time, Non-Value Added Time and
Process Cycle Efficiency of your process. From there, it’s easy to
customize and further explain your process by adding symbols from the SmartPanel and
building your Information Flow. The completed Value Stream
Map will provide an informative, easy to understand summary
of your value chain. As an element of Value Stream Mapping and
on its own, Process Mapping with flowcharts allows you to get a
visual glimpse of your business processes and how they are currently operating, allowing
you to see how they could be operating better by mapping out potential
solutions and identifying activities that do or do not add
value. With SmartDraw’s automation you can document process in real-time. And SmartDraw
lets you quickly and easily link between related processes,
so your processes are always easy to navigate and communicate no
matter how complicated they get. A Kanban Board displays all work active in
a project and helps you sort it out. It’s a great way to plan work in
progress, and manage project activity and inventory flow. Just drag and drop and add
and delete cards with just a click. It’s a simple yet powerful way
to stay organized and on track. The PDCA Cycle, which means Plan, Do, Check,
Act, is a four-step iterative process that encourages you to be
methodical in your approach to problem solving and implementing solutions. SmartDraw provides
several great looking versions of the PDCA Cycle which you
can easily add information to, specific to your tasks.
A3 Thinking enables you to identify, frame and then act on problems and challenges. It
can be used wherever there is a need for people to work together
to get clarity on a problem or proposal and then to create a set of
realistic and effective countermeasures. With SmartDraw, you can leverage any of our visuals
to document the data in your preferred format. It’s a great
way to summarize and report a lot of information in a single glance,
whether in an email or printed on a single sheet of paper.
The Cause-and-Effect or Fishbone Diagram helps users identify root causes of problems. It
is often used in needs assessment to assist in illustrating
and communicating the relationships among several potential causes of
a performance issue. No other software makes it this easy to automatically add, delete
and rearrange the elements of a Cause and Effect Diagram.
A Spaghetti Diagram allows a critical analysis of the movement of material or people within
the workspace, with the goal of eliminating transit waste. They’re
easy to customize in SmartDraw… or lay over a pre-existing floor
plan. 5S is a targeted list of activities that promotes
organization and efficiency in the workplace. The 5S terms are
sorting, straightening, shining, standardizing, and sustaining. SmartDraw provides 5S audit
forms to help you improve workplace safety, reduce waste and
maintain quality service. A method used in the sorting phase of 5S
involves placing tags on items to designate their status. Red tags indicate that an item
should be removed from the work area.
The “5 whys” are used as a problem solving method to explore the cause and effect relationship
of a particular problem. The main purpose is to constantly
ask “why?” and progress through the various layers until you
progress towards the true root cause. With SmartDraw you can do this with a variety of
different visuals. SIPOC Analysis is a high-level examination
of the state of a process. It summarizes key elements of one or
more processes with a table which lists suppliers – who provides resources to the process?,
inputs – what is provided to the process?, process – the
steps you follow to transform inputs into outputs, outputs – the
outcome of the previous steps, and customers – who receives the output? Just another
way SmartDraw helps you examine your business activities and figure
out how to make them better. You can’t properly carry out Lean improvements
in your company without the use of visuals. And no software
makes it easier or faster to create great looking Lean diagrams, than SmartDraw.