Steve Borris - Strategic Lean Mapping

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Writing a book ties the author to a computer for a long time and, when the writing gets tough, it is helpful to get a bit of encouragement and a glass of wine.

With that in mind, I would like to thank my wife, Carol, as she is the one who has had to put up with thistwice so far and probably a third time!

For encouragement, my nephew, David Allan, and his wife, Donna, have also been a source of constant support. Besides, their two children, Tagen and Shea, constantly tell everyone that I am a great author. This is not easy to live up to.

Steven Borris is a manufacturing advisor and continuous improvement specialist in the science, food and drink, electronics, textile, optics, electromechanics, medicine, and semiconductor industries. His technical expertise includes equipment installation and maintenance, root-cause fault resolution, equipment redesign, calibration, customer support, commissioning, and training. Mr. Borris is currently with SMAS, a Scottish government agency tasked with improving the efficiencies of companies. He also is the author of Total Productive Maintenance (McGraw-Hill, 2006).

Since writing my first book, Total Productive Maintenance, in 20032004, I have had multiple opportunities to reapply the techniques covered in that book. I also have been fortunate enough to learn some new ones. Mapping is the key technique that I will pass on to you in this book. It is one of the most powerful ways I know to diagnose and anticipate problems.

Why Mapping?

What is mapping? It is a range of techniques for analyzing the steps (or stages) in a process. Any process is suitable. In my experience, the most common maps are on processesthe way a product is manufacturedbut mapping also can be the way players are selected for the school football team or how a cable box is connected to a TV. Mapping is incredibly versatile. In business, we can analyze a sales process, an order process, a customer complaint process, a disciplinary process used by management, a stores process for running a warehouse, or how the maintenance or cleaning department functions; in medicine, we can analyze how a patient is prepared for surgery or how drugs are prepared and distributed to patients; and in government, we can analyze how traffic flows through an intersection or how a police officer interacts with a suspect or a victimin short, we can map anything! Mapping even can be used to create an overview of how a company operates. I am not the first to realize this: the big picture map, developed by Toyota when I was a child, is one of the most useful functions aroundfrom a diagnostic perspective. It was used originally to develop strategy at a management level, but as I will explain in , it can be adapted to suit whatever you need it to show.

Mapping is used most often to analyze a process to find ways to improve how the task is carried out. If Lean principles are applied, we can make any process more efficient. If we review the process with a team of skilled operators and engineers, we can identify any steps where errors are introduced and where they affect the rest of the process. Once we know this, we can take steps to eliminate the problems and make the process more reliable. It all boils down to what you need from the process and the degree of detail included in the map.

With some expert advice from McGraw-Hill, I chose to title this book Strategic Lean Mapping: Blending Improvement Processes for the Perfect Solution