Draft:Current State Map

The Current State Map is a diagram of how the process under consideration is being conducted at the moment. The map should precisely simulate the flow of the current value. The Current State Map is a part of value stream mapping in the first process which was first documented by Charles E. Knoeppel in 1918 book Installing Efficiency Methods.

Value stream mapping and the lean management philosophy were introduced to many industries other than manufacturing by the 21st century, including healthcare, product and software development, IT operations, and logistics. Consequently, a portion of value stream mapping was implemented in these industries. Resulting in many variations of the current state map such as the as-is user journey.

Elements

To create a Current State Map, gather all possible information that describes the production process. Gathering all required data enables the execution of several calculations and the identification of the primary production process indicators.

Many fields apply the Current State Map for different problems with the same process but with different indicators which leads to various forms of visualization such as user experience design, factory analysis, health condition, etc.

User experience design

In the context of user experience design, the Current State Map represents the present journey of a system or product. This map is used when people try to comprehend the current user/customer journey and arrange stakeholders according to the state of the journey. It typically serves as the initial stage in one of two projects: continuous experience improvement and the entire experience redesign. When used to describe current or 'as-is' paths made by users, journeys serve as a useful tool for information collecting during the 'discovery' phase.

The journeys point out both the difficulties users have encountered and the beneficial aspects of the experience. When trying to understand the present user/customer journey and organizing stakeholders together around what the journey entails and what needs to be corrected, a current state map can be used.

Key Components of the as-is User Journey Map

Journey maps come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Journey maps, no matter how they appear, share the five key elements listed below:

Actor

Diagrams visualize all key indicator for current state map in context of user journey.

The persona or user who travels on the journey is the actor. The journey map is about the actor — a point of view. Actors typically align with personas, and their actions on the map are data driven.

Scenario + Expectations

The scenario corresponds to an actor's need or goal and particular expectations, and it represents the scenario that the journey map addresses. One scenario would be to switch mobile plans in order to save money; in this instance, it would be expected that all the information required to make an informed decision would be easily accessible.

Scenarios can be predicted for products that are still in the design stage or they can be real for services and products that already exist on the market.

The best scenarios for journey maps are those that include multiple channels, describe a process (and thus involve a series of transitions over time), or involve a sequence of events (like shopping or traveling).

State of user journey.

Journey Phases

The various high-level stages of the journey are known as journey phases. They convey the remaining data in the journey map (actions, thoughts, and emotions) structure. The stages will differ depending on the scenario; each organization will typically have information to assist in identifying the stages for that specific situation.

For examples:

• The stages in an e-commerce scenario (such as purchasing Bluetooth speakers) can be found, try, buy, use, and support.
• The stages of a large (or luxuriant) purchase, such as purchasing a vehicle, can include engagement, education, research, appraisal, and justification.
• For a business-to-business scenario (like rolling out an internal tool), the stages could be purchase, adoption, retention, expansion, and advocacy.

Actions, Mindsets, and Emotions

These are the actions, ideas, and emotions that the actor experiences during the journey and that are represented through the phases of the journey map.

The real actions and steps that users take are known as actions. This is not intended to be a detailed, step-by-step record of each individual interaction. Instead, it tells the story of the actions the actor does during that stage.

Users' questions, motivations, and information needs at various points in their journey are correlated with their mindsets. These are research-derived customer verbatims, ideally.

Throughout the journey's phases, emotions are plotted as a single line that literally indicates the experience's emotional "ups" and "downs." Consider this line to be a contextual layer of emotion that indicates whether the user is satisfied or dissatisfied.

Opportunities

Opportunities are insights from mapping that relate to how the user experience can be optimized, along with additional contexts like ownership and metrics. The following opportunities and insights aid the team in learning from the map:

• With this knowledge, what actions are necessary?
• What change belongs to whom?
• Where are the most promising prospects?
• How will we evaluate the adjustments that we make?

Improvement of the inventory factory production process

In the context of an improvement of the inventory factory production process. Implementing Current state map in this case is utilized in Value Steam mapping tools. To create a Current State Map, gather all the data that describes the production process. Gathering all required information enables the execution of several computations and the identification of the primary production process indicators. The indicators are: OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness, OPC for Overall Production Capacity, C/Tp for Product Cycle, I for Inventory (stocks), EPE for Every Part Every, and Timeline for the transportation of materials through various stages of production, etc. from said that the Current State Map, created with the MS Visio 2010 software, incorporates indicators determining the production process.

Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)

• OEE is the industry standard for assessing productivity in manufacturing. It determines the proportion of manufacturing time that is actually productive, to put it simply. When you achieve a 100% OEE score, you are manufacturing only good parts at maximum speed without any stop time. This translates to 100% Quality (only good parts), 100% Performance (as quickly as possible), and 100% Availability (no stop time) in the OEE language.
• One of the best practices for manufacturing is measuring OEE. You will learn essential insights about how to methodically enhance your manufacturing process by measuring OEE and the underlying losses. The most effective metric for detecting losses, gauging advancement, and enhancing manufacturing equipment productivity (i.e., waste elimination) is OEE.

Overall Production Capacity (OPC)

• Production Capacity is the highest level of product output that a business can achieve within a given time frame while utilizing its available resources. This measure is significant because it influences a manufacturer's short- and long-term critical business decisions.
• Depending on the type of operation at hand, different formulas can be utilized for estimating a manufacturing company's production capacity. The calculation of production capacity for a business that engages in high-mix, low-volume operations differ significantly from that of a business that operates in mass production at high volumes.

Product Cycle (C/Tp)

• Cycle time is the length of time needed to manufacture one component, finish a single product, or run a single standard procedure. This measurable quantity expresses the quickest repeatable duration that an operator can complete all steps of a standardized work process before restarting.
• Finding the "best" time for a typical worker to complete a task on a regular basis is the objective here. To find a faster cycle time, don't look for the "best" or fastest worker; similarly, don't use the minimum measurement for your cycle time.

Inventory

• The accounting of items, parts, and raw materials that a business either sells or uses for production is known as inventory.
• Inventory management is a skill used by company leaders to make sure they always have enough inventory on hand and to recognize shortages.

Every Part Every (EPE)

• EPE is a lean production control technique that focuses continuously on setup reduction while leveling product volume and mixes to create a fixed cyclic plan.

• EPE's basic idea is to follow lean principles and minimize the size of each plan cycle by implementing as many changeovers as possible.

Application

For User Journey

Example of as-is user journey.

There are 2 major advantages of journey maps and most UX mappings. First, when creating a map, communication and an aligned mental model for the whole team is needed. In organizations, uncommon understanding is a common problem since key performance indicators (KPI) are different, and it is not the responsibility of anyone to study the whole user experience. So, the objective of the journey mapping is to make the same vision in the team because without it we can't agree on how to improve the user experience.

Second, you can use products that are generated from maps to communicate understanding of your users or services to stakeholders. A journey map is a powerful way to carry information to make it memorable, concise, and create the same vision. Once the team moves on, maps can be the basis for making decisions.

The designer can utilize several kinds of methods, like shadowing users, asking users to describe their experiences, gathering analytics to reveal journeys, and several other techniques, when creating ‘as-is’ journeys. When analyzing experiences through multiple perspectives of user roles or categories, journeys can be merged with other user-centered design tools such as personas to provide a deeper insight.

For Factory Production

There is a great encouragement to comprehend the hazard level and bottleneck behavior to detect faults and maintain the performance of machines in the industries. To understand that, making a current state map, maintenance schedule, and other basic resources is essential.

The two main goals of the analysis are finding waste-producing activities from the Current State Map and suggesting changes.

Note that: It is impossible to acquire data for the Current State Map within one day for a construction task. This is because the production time in construction is much longer than in production. Therefore, people need to track the whole process of the construction activity for an appropriate amount of time and a global average should be considered.

Alternative forms

Value Stream Mapping (VSM)

Value stream maps and other diagrams of material and information flows were first documented in Charles E. Knoeppel's 1918 book Installing Efficiency Methods. In the middle of the 20th century, Toyota implemented this technique by establishing its lean production system. In the Toyota production system, Kaizen, or continuous improvement, was emphasized through value stream mapping.

Value stream mapping is a lean manufacturing tool that displays each repeatable step required to provide the customer with a good or service. Another name for it is information- and material-flow mapping. Although the value stream mapping method was developed for the manufacturing industry, by the 21st century, it had become popular in a number of non-manufacturing industries, including software development, IT operations, and healthcare. For instance, value stream mapping in DevOps can identify time-wasting or excessively complex steps in the development, test, release, and operations support phases. It also helps lower expenses by automating some processes.

Value stream mapping creates a flow-process diagram of activities and other information about the project. It is a standard technique for recording work steps and workflow. And then implementing systematic steps to analyze these procedures to create a development plan Additionally, it improves the process by applying three strategies: process modification, eliminating the unnecessary, and activity improvement.

Value stream mapping was developed for industrial production. So, the characteristics and requirements of the building environment are different from others. Therefore, changing something is important for building value stream mapping. Pasqualini and Zawislak (2005) suggest the following steps.

The process inside value stream mapping is as follows. The first thing you need to do is audit the system’s characteristics to understand the current state, then map it into the Current State Map to identify the disadvantages. After removing waste and activity modifications, you can design a future state map and implement it in the case study project. Finally, you can evaluate the increase in production. The last step of value stream mapping is the future state map which is created by the analysis of the Current State Map.

4 of 7 workers said that they detect bottleneck behavior using value stream mapping, operation monitoring, OEE, buffer, and availability throughput.

Implementing the value stream mapping in all micro-level activities of a construction project is unnecessary.  Normally, each large state in the construction project slowly occurs for a long time and has various procedures.  As a result, there are different products. Every stage may be thought of as a specific type of sub-construction. In order to utilize value stream mapping in construction, a group of related activities that form a single process might be chosen.

Future State Map

The future state map represents an “ideal state” which is the optimal state that could exist above the Current State Map. If new technology, procedures, or skills are included in the picture, a future state map is excellent for displaying business ambition or the art of the possible.

Criticism

Technologies that support data measurement and the creation of current state maps can be developed. While other engineering fields have advanced their use of equipment, standards, and traceability of measurement procedures, industrial engineering still needs to pay attention to gathering production data. Technology for real-time distance measurement is becoming more practical as ICT costs decline. By using these technologies, data reliability can be increased, and better decisions can be made when creating future maps.

Reproducibility and repeatability evaluations, which are used to create process maps, are also helpful in the normalization and standardization of data process measurement. Organizations with multiple factories can analyze and compare variations in performance at various manufacturing facilities that assemble similar kinds of products. Also, one of the industries mentioned that having strategic retention makes availability increase by 5%.

The duration required to gather information for creating the current state map further compromises the VSM tool's continued usage. VSM can be applied more frequently by facilitating the production data measurement process, which increases the tool's usefulness in kaizen (continuous improvement) processes.

The results of future state maps and the adoption of statistical techniques for tracking process performances can both be influenced by continuous data measurements.

However, making use of current and future state maps, according to Bicheno and Holweg (2009), is a time-consuming and wasteful process unless it results in a specific action plan. Similar to Huthwaite (2007), Lu and Yang (2015) claim that Toyota rarely uses value stream mapping and instead favors the "Standardized Work" (SW) tool. Huthwaite (2007) believes that SW offers a more thorough analysis of processes than value stream mapping and is better equipment for standardizing inefficient activities than the requirement first to portray them in the Current State Map.