Article: Designing risk management using Value Stream Mapping

We published a little conference article on one of my favourite subjects: Designing risk management processes for engineering projects! I am posting about it, because looking at the download numbers, it seems to be rather popular!

In the paper, we are taking a classic Lean Thinking approach of following risk management value streams, identifying waste, and proposing a redesigned risk management framework for our collaboration partner based on those findings. Check it out!

Doing a classic Waste Identification on project risk management practices was actually a lot of fun. You should try it too!

Source: Willumsen et al (2019)

Abstract

Risk management (RM) in new product development (NPD) is often implemented as a standardized framework and ends up being carried out as a tick the box, non-value adding activity. To avoid this problem, RM needs to be tailored to the organization and NPD project. This paper identifies a gap in both understanding and facilitating tailoring, i.e. design of RM systems in NPD. To understand how to design RM systems, we must better understand how RM adds value to NPD activities. We applied Product Development Value Stream Mapping (PDVSM) to RM and conceptualized a Risk Value Stream Mapping (RVSM) framework to support design. Through a state-of-the-art literature review, we identified typical categories of value and waste in RM as well as approaches to model the RM in NPD. We developed and tested components of the RVSM framework based on PDVSM in three case companies. In this paper, results are presented regarding waste, value and potential ways to model the value stream in RM. The framework enables a diagnosis of the current state of RM in companies and supports future design activities pertaining to RM systems. This paper is positioned at the intersection
of design, lean thinking and RM.

Citation

Willumsen, P. L., Oehmen, J., & Rossi, M. (2019). Designing risk management: applying value stream mapping to risk management. In S. Wartzack, & B. Schleich (Eds.), Proceedings of 22nd International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED19) (pp. 2229-2238). Cambridge University Press. Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Design, No. DS94 https://doi.org/10.1017/dsi.2019.229