Creating better, faster, and cheaper products in the growing competitive market is a challenging task. Information system and their improvements have an essential role in improving the performance and supporting the task of creating the desired products. Therefore, the objective of this study is to create a new information analysis tool, named Information Stream Map (ISM), at the strategic level to assess organizations in enhancing their performance. ISM aims to eliminate waste and enhance value thought visualizing and improving the flow and processing of information. The tools has been developed through integrating information analysis concepts in literature and tools such as value stream mapping as adopted from lean thinking. Afterwards, ISM has been implemented in a manufacturing plant that consists of six departments. Finally, based on literature review and the case study results, a guideline to eliminate waste by maximizing value has been developed.
By mapping the current state in the manufacturing plant, waste has been identified. Improvements include centralizing information system, Information for manufacturability, cross functional teams, and standardization. The average improvement anticipated from applying these improvements and eliminating waste in four departments is 24%. The ISM and guidelines presented in this study are anticipated to support improvements of information as part of lean thinking, and can be used as a tool at the strategic level of organizations to map and monitor information flow and processing.
Key words: information system, value stream map, lean, information
Information management is one of the main sources that adds a competitive edge for industries and enables efficient and effective processing and control. However, managing information remains an area that needs further research and improvement due to issues such as the growing complexity of customer requirements and processes, increasing size of unstructured data, and advancing technology.
Although there is an increasing interest in Information System (IS), an inappropriate use of IS can lead to problems that out weight its benefits. Issues include challenges in distributing reports among the institutions departments, increasing paper loss, and assessing the planning and management of information processes. These problems eventually lead to a rise in the non-added value work, over cost through consumption of time and resources, and quality reduction.
One of the leading improvements methods is Lean thinking. Lean can be defined as an approach and set of practices that aim to maximize value through minimizing waste [Womack and Jones]. However, lean has been successful in the operational level, and its extent of application in the information improvement is not fully documented and understood. Therefore, in this study, lean thinking has been applied in the field of information system, with a focus on Value Stream Mapping (VSM).
VSM has been used mainly in manufacturing to map the production flow; however, its application in the information domain is limited. Therefore, this research uses VSM to support visualizing the system, and to enable the system analyst to highlight and identify improvement opportunities. The main contribution of this paper is an information analysis tool that integrated IS concepts and other tools such as VSM and Data Flow Diagram (DFD). The paper concludes by introducing a guideline that can be used to eliminate waste by applying value based methods in three dimensions of information processing.
The ISM has been developed based on literature and a case study. The first step in this study was literature review. Publications have been reviewed to identify the current state of the art of information and their improvement methods and to explore and integrate available improvement tools, such as VSM, from-to-chart, and DFD.
After developing a conceptual model of the tool, a case study was used to verify and improve the ISM. The company consists of 9 major departments, with a moderate level of complexity. During the data collection phase in the company, interviews, general observation, and traditional flow chart were used to show the flow of information starting from and ending with customer. The results of the case study have been verified through a series of discussions and interviews with managers and individuals involved in the information processing cycle.
Concept Development: Information Stream Map
In this section, the conceptual model of the information analysis tool, named Information Stream Map (ISM), is developed and introduced. ISM can be used at the strategic level of any organization to simplify their complex information processing and transfer into a 2D map. Moreover, information waste and value can be determined through basic calculations relative to time. The map provides a visual framework of the information flow from start point (order receive) to end (product/service shipped) to help understand information processing and flow within organizations, and assess in improving the performance by eliminating waste and enhancing value.
The main variables that are considered in the construction of ISM include:
- Departments: these are departments which receive, process, or dispatch information.
- Activities: are the processes conducted to convert information from one state to the other.
- Delivery methods: these are icons that define the delivery type of information between activities or departments.shown in Table 1.
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Timeline: the transaction and processing are shown in chronological order relative to time. This is shown as an axis and includes processing time and delivery time needed. The timeline is an essential variable that is used to identify explicit value and waste of information.
In addition for the lean concepts and VSM, two other tools have been utilized in the development of the ISM. First is the From to Chart, that has been further developed not to only show the dependency (flow) of information, but also as a collection sheet for information such as name of process, processing time, delivery method, and frequency. Second method is the DFD, which has been used to provide details of the information mapping in the process and was further developed to integrate the value/waste lines.