Value Stream Maps and Critical Path Method for production and procurement planning: a Make To Order company

The concept of Value Stream Map (VSM) is inserted as key point in Lean Manufacturing (LM). VSMs, originally named "material and information flow maps", allow a one page diagram representation of the whole process required to realize one or more final products. Because of this they are a common tool used to describe production processes and to underline the business areas in which wastes are identified. Nevertheless the aim of this paper is not to introduce a practical example of VSMs implementation, how to define a new approach that uses VSMs as tool to support production and procurement planning according to scarce resources capacity over a critical production path. This approach is articulated on 5 sequential steps and integrates the classical technique of VSMs with tools characteristic of planning theory like Critical Path Method (CPM) and capacity planning techniques like Rough Cut Capacity Planning (RCCP).