Using Value Stream Management to Enhance Organizational Communications and Continuous Improvement - A Case Study in The Subsea Domain

Abstract

Continuous improvement is a process of focused and continuous incremental innovation, based on the aim to eliminate waste in all systems and processes of an organization. Until now, continuous improvement has been applied mostly by optimizing processes through the elimination of the seven types of wastes in production. However, to attain a complete continuous improvement company, it is necessary to perceive lean as a people system, integrating all the parts of the company in order to work together to identify new issues for improvement.

Company-wide continuous improvement means that business divisions must work together to form an integrated value stream, focused on meeting the customer needs and demands, and concerned with moving from an organization constructed of functional silos to one that is fully integrated. This master thesis addresses the research questions about what is needed to create a collaborative continuous improvement enterprise, in which all the parts of an organization are included and integrated with cross-functional teams in order to eliminate common waste and achieve an efficient flow in the complete value stream. The research questions are: What characteristics of an organization can support Continuous Improvement? What practices can a company use to implement Continuous Improvement? and How can a company implement these practices?

The thesis considers characteristics such as organic structure, practices such as kaizen events, and value stream management as the method to support the implementation of continuous improvement in a whole company. These attributes have been compared and applied in the case study company Kongsberg Maritime Subsea (KM Subsea), who are creating a collaborative continuous improvement process involving all the business functions across each of their value streams: Fish Finding, Catch Monitoring, Underwater Science, and Naval systems. The case study organized the application of a kick-off kaizen event in KM Subsea during which the whole value stream from Fish Finding was mapped. This activity has been possible with the help of systems engineering, by having a whole value stream view with a breakdown into manageable subsystems.