RFID- Enabled dynamic Value Stream Mapping

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is one of the most powerful lean manufacturing tools used for quick analyses of products and information flow through a manufacturing system from door to door. This versatile, powerful method is used to visualize product flows as snapshot; it just describes the production behavior within specific period from the total production time; which some time cause a misleading during lean tools implementation. In this paper a new real-time data collection called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system will be integrated in VSM to collect the objects information through a manufacturing system in the production floor. The new integrated RFID-VSM system called Dynamic Value Stream Mapping (DVSM) Provides a real-time data for VSM to be able to interact with the processes, people, material, and any other constraint relevant to the production situation. As time progresses and the operation are "producing", the workers and managers will have the ability to interact live with the animated flow. Queues build up, inventory deplete, people move, etc ... Based on the real situation the managers can take the right decision at the right time where the workers will make changes to processing capacity, labor requirements, flow, and cell layout, to optimize and design or develop the future state.