Literature Review Thesis Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Literature Review - Thesis Example Applying the lean principles is an important part of the stages where the product development takes place. The key part of VSM is to understand and visually represent the processes involved. It is essentially therefore a modelling of all processes involved in the product development. When the product is developed or even during the design stage, it is also necessary to validate these processes. The various case studies mentioned in this paper show how lean principles have been applied and how VSM is carried out, for what purpose and the outcomes achieved. It is shown that at the heart of this is the extraction of as much value as possible. The important element that enables the above is data. Data collection and analysis is therefore the foundation for the entire endeavour. However, managing the data is not a straightforward task. There are issues of quality and procedures to consider for data management and movement, security and traceability, and appropriate data modelling. Data warehousing provides a total architecture for all data collection, storage and retrieval requirements, which is suitable for today’s needs. Moreover, data mining allows lean principles to be applied for extracting valuable data. Vibration testing is one particular area in which lean principles and VSM not only have significant potential but their use is critical. This is especially so for safety reasons besides improvements to structural design, increasing the longevity of the product and enhancing its overall quality. This review of the literature delves on the ideas and studies of others on the topic of value stream mapping. This could help to gather useful ideas, improve existing ones, and also put the researcher’s own study into context. Following a brief description of lean principles and methodologies, we describe Value Stream Mapping (VSM) in detail and discuss the significance of value as well as