McGraw Hill Construction, the Lean Construction Institute, and Dassault Systèmes teamed up to produce an in-depth report on Lean Construction. Below is an excerpt from that report on Value Stream Mapping, implemented on the Cardiovascular Research Building project at the University of California in San Francisco.
Achieving Savings Through Value Stream Mapping
Rosendin Electric was challenged by the project owner to look at ways to bring their projects even more under budget.
As a firm that prides itself on innovation and one that strives to remain on the cutting edge of technology, Rosendin tasked one of its in-house study groups to come up with ideas that would be able to save time and cost.
As a result, one of the approaches they decided to pursue was Value Stream Mapping (VSM).
Process Improvements Identified Through Value Stream Mapping
VSM, in its simplest term, sets out to observe every step of a process and identifies areas where improvements can be made to eliminate waste. The technique was first originated by Toyota and is a lean tool that employs a flow diagram documenting in high detail every step of a process.
