Article Preview
TopProblem Definition And Research Questions
Due to communication and collaboration difficulties across departments and enterprises, process-relevant information is scattered within organizations or supply chain networks. An insufficient transparency of individual process targets, such as cost, quality or lead time, can be observed. In addition, frequent customer changes lead to deviations of required materials, components and associated processes. In Figure 1, the product and information flows as well as obstacles that inhibit an effective supply chain cooperation are shown.
Figure 1. Example of a cross-enterprise supply chain (sources of pictures, 2017)
Especially in case of internal or supply chain audits, when the overall process flow needs to be mapped, analyzed and discussed beyond departmental or organizational boundaries, complications and misunderstandings arise i.a. from notational differences that result in rework and finally in a waste of resources. To overcome the communication and collaboration difficulties in supply chain networks, tools and techniques originating from Lean Production are transferred to further industrial sectors (Oberhausen & Plapper, 2015). VSM is an established technique to analyze and to design value streams within organizations (Plapper & André, 2011). However, due to a heterogeneous landscape of VSM approaches, there is no common understanding of value stream data, especially across company or corporate borders.
The information transparency further decreases while considering different types of VSM patents and applying a variety of VSM software solutions. Thus, this diversity in regard to the use of VSM creates a need for standardization. Based on a comparison of existing VSM approaches, a standardization of VSM in four different categories is proposed (cf. (Oberhausen & Plapper, 2015)):
- •
VSM symbols;
- •
VSM data boxes and VSM parameters;
- •
Value stream calculation; and
- •
Value stream visualization.
In this context, the following assumption can be formulated.