Reference no: EM132943788

Workflow

Workflow consists of flow of data, tasks and documents from one workstation to another, within or outside the organization. They consist of a series of steps used to convert inputs (raw material or information) into outputs (finished products or reports or decisions). Companies focus on workflow management to improve the overall productivity of the process. This includes primarily eliminating the wasteful activities from the processes. Wastes such as Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Over-production, Over-processing, Defects are eliminated or minimized to improve the overall efficiency of the processes. Thereby reducing errors, costs, defects and increasing profits, sales and outputs. Value stream mapping (VSM) is a lean management tool used to map and analyze the current state of the process and design the desired future state map. The VSM indicates various details about the process. This includes document flow, authority flow, material flow, inventory status, lagging and leading processes or workstations, etc. Thereby helping us identify wastes in the process. Improvement projects are then defined, prioritized and allotted to responsible individuals in order to eliminate the wastes or at-least reduce their impact. Thereby workflow enables to standardize processes and procedures to obtain optimized outputs. They facilitate planning and scheduling of activities, automation of tasks and smooth, systematic working of the organization. We can take example of Japanese automobile manufacturer - Toyota who is an devised Toyota Production System, globally called as Lean Manufacturing system of increasing productivity and efficiency by reducing wastes. They apply standardization to workflow in order to ensure high efficiency and repeatability.

Toyota was a leader in process automation...and that was a strategic advantage to them. Now that everyone knows how it works and can reproduce it in other company's factories, is it still a strategic advantage?