Process Mapping And A Study Of Lean Management (Research Paper Sample)

PROCESS MAPPING AND A STUDY OF LEAN MANAGEMENT
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Literature review
It is important for any organization to identify the critical processes that are significant in delivering the necessary strategy In this paper, the author significantly focuses on Walmart an organization based in the United States that are a large company by revenue and runs various branches. The company operates a chain of hypermarkets, grocery stores, and discount department stores across the globe. The Walmart target customers include any individual who has a drive for saving their money(DOBKIN, 2008). Since the company offers a variety of products and services as listed in the above sections of this paper, the clients and customers come from all walks of life across the globe with great intentions that they will receive favorable prices and excellent after the sale of services.
A 4v profile of goods and services provided by this great company evolve around value, variety, visibility, and volume. High volume, one can deduce that with the acquisition of new marketing methods, there have been high levels of production and distribution of various products in the different retail outlets. Regarding variety, there has been noted availability of a wide range of variety of goods through branding the existing products and creation of new products in the market. Walmart has been able to adapt to the changes in the global market forces thus giving them a competitive advantage among the other service providers. Variation has been high as the case with variety since the company has been compelled to come up with designs that will enable the customers to be attracted to their array of products and always yearn for more and thus keeping the demands for goods high. In the case of visibility, there has been a mix-up of reactions since this visibility is always in and around the operations of the company and the final product released to the market.
The description of TWO operational processes that are needed to deliver the company’s goods and services.
Process maps are a valuable tool largely used by most firms and organization in making critical analysis of the steps that makes up the process through which a combination of various inputs is transformed to the desired output. Regarding the company and the topic of discussion in the section of this paper, Walmart chain stores use a variety of stipulated approaches whose focal point is on managing the inventories, supply chain and the inventories. The Walmart company with a few has had little success in refurbishing its practices in the manufacturing of goods and service delivery to the clients. The success of this business is substantially associated with the high performance accrued by the personnel in and around operation management. Prioritization of mapping the whole set of processes on the various goods and services provided have led to high performances.
INPUTS

TRANSFORMATION ACTIVITIES

OUTPUTS

Groceries (meal solutions, grain, and pasta)

Packaging, to ensure that the product is inside a container along with packing materials. Other activities involved; giving of Information about the contents, crop variety, origin and harvest date, etc. (traceability) and attractiveness.

Boxed meals,

Rice and grains

Conditioning which Refers to the hydrothermal treatment of seeds to increase the quality of the nutrients.

Rice and grains

Walmart’s operations management insurances a variety of approaches that are focused on managing the supply chain and inventory, as well as sales performance. The company’s success is partly based on adequate performance in operations management. Specifically, Walmart’s management covers all of the ten decision areas of processes management. These decision areas belong to the issues and concerns that directors face on a daily basis. Walmart’s application of the ten decisions of operations management reflects managers’ prioritization of business objectives. In turn, this prioritization shows the strategic significance of the different decision areas of operations management in Walmart’s business (MORETON, 2009).
Review on lean management
Lean management is an approach that when implemented in any organization leads to ensuring that value of goods and services is delivered to clients. Such tool entails running an organization while supporting the concept of making improvements in any sector within an organization continuously. Lean management seeks to find achievements in a gradual way and considerable improvements with increased changes in the various processes with the overall long-term goal of improving efficiency and quality of goods and services delivered to the targeted clients. Elimination of waste, constant progress, respect for humanity, leveled production, just in time production and quality built in. In the implementation of a lean management plan, the above essential functions(ARHOOMAND, 2011). There needs a commitment from everyone in the organization. Otherwise, there results to failure. Most organizations regard these to the guideline principles in their operations. The section of his paper focuses on giving detailed discussions about the following three with incorporation that each accrues to the user and identification of an organization that applies them in their daily operations.
Elimination of waste
Lean management in any organization seeks to help solve time wastages, efforts of the personnel engaged. The available resources and this is achieved through making analysis and identifying all the steps involved in the process. In addition to this, the tool is applied in eliminating the steps that are deemed as useless considering the findings of the analysis made since they are regarded to be of no value addition in the end product being manufactured. The primary goal of the lean management process is ensuring the existence of production lines with minimal wastages and at the same time producing commodities that are standard while emulating quality. Mainly, the approach achieves its goals through reduction of the seven sources that lead to wastage of resources and are compromised to be non-value added activities (2017). The above concept has been addressed over the recent past to meet the customer’s desires and needs. In addition to value addition and making improvement in the quality released to the market, the approach makes a strong emphasis on reduction of cost and consequently has its focal point on improving quality and involvements of the personnel put to task. The Walmart company is a renowned company that applies this concept to its manufacturing processes.
Essential sources that lead to waste include transport; this entails the physical dislocation of goods and services throughout the process. Waste of transportation facilities and resources occurs in the case where there is plenty of unnecessary movements. Unnecessary transport system results in the case where there is the availability of sick layout and physical designs in the production flour.
Secondly, over production is another avenue of wastage identified by the leads management approach which is the case where the quantity of commodities produced outdoes the amount that is demanded by the targeted consumers. Overproduction results to a firm or an institution incurring high overhead cost through wastages in unnecessary transports, the cost of acquiring raw materials and cost of hiring personnel.
In addition to this, waiting is another concept identified by the lean management approach. In a case scenario where there is a machine not running due to malfunctioning or any other reason or an employee idling, this may be caused by inappropriate workloads and poor designs, etc. In addition to this, there exist defects which mean the existence of an entity that does not meet the required specifications. Wastages occurs in the case where there exist a set of processes in an organization that does not contribute to any value addition and thus contributing to waste. A minor defect in a company can cause massive wastages of resources among other valuable things.
Inventories are considered as essential things in any organization and in the case where they are excessively used, there are losses of space available since they occupy a lot of space. Storage of large amounts of unnecessary data needs to be discouraged since they lead to filling of space that would have rather been used for other purposes. Movement by the employees from one point to another with no purpose are regarded to be a waste of time as a significant resource. Other sources of wasted movements include reaching, twisting, bending among others. Finally, the last concept covered by the principles of lean management is over processing that incorporates any process that does not add any value to the product. Like in the case where filling of documents and files that contain information that has no use to the organization.
Quality built in
Quality built in is another manufacturing concept that this section touches on. The whole idea behind this concept is that quality need not be compromised and in most instances, it's integrated into the manufacturing processes. Quality is put up into the design of the parts in the form of packages. Quality is assured from the very initial stages, design all the way to the final process of shipping to the consumers. Automating of the systems with the human interface falls under this concept like in the case where machines are integrated in such a way that they can detect any defect and stop immediately which prevents an operator from causing disorientation to the parts. In such a system that embraces quality, stand...