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Activity Based Costing Value Stream Mapping

S. S. Abuthakeer * P.V. Mohanram G. Mohan Kumar

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Park College of Engineering and
PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, Technology, Avinashi Road, Kaniyur,
641 004, India 641 004, India Coimbatore 641 659, India
E-mail Adres: syathpsgtech@gmail.com

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Lean manufacturing,
This paper attempts to integrate Value Stream Map (VSM) Value stream map,
Activity based costing,
with the cost aspects. A value stream map provides a blueprint for Target costing.

implementing lean manufacturing concepts by illustrating

information and materials flow in a value stream. The objective of ARTICLE INFO
Received 21 December 2010
the present work is to integrate the various cost aspects. The idea Received in revised form 27 December 2010
Accepted 29 December 2010
is to introduce a cost line, which enhances the clarity in decision Available online 31 December 2010
making. The redesigned map proves to be effective in
highlighting the improvement areas, in terms of quantitative data.
TAKT time calculation is carried out to set the pace of
production. Target cost is set as a bench mark for product cost.
The results of the study indicates that implementing VSM led to
reduction in the following areas: processing lead time by 34%,
processing cycle time was reduced by 35%, Inventory level by
66% and product cost from Rs 137 to Rs 125. It was found that
adopting VSM in a small scale industry can make significant
improvements.

1. Introduction
Success in modern manufacturing industry directly correlates to how a company handles global
competition. Cost effective solutions and practices are essential to stay competitive in the market.
Many manufacturing facilities have experienced the drastic changes and are in a process of
undergoing physical and cultural transformation to adopt the concept of lean thinking.
Lean has been originally created and defined as the process of eliminating waste
(Womack et al. 1990) Toyota along with the support a system to reduce or eliminate
waste and non-value added activities from the various process (Ohno, 1988; Shingo
and Dillon, 1988).

________________________________
* Corresponding Author
 S. S. ABUTHAKEER, P. V. MOHANRAM, G. M. KUMAR /International Journal of Lean Thinking Volume 1, Issue 2 (December 2010)

The conceptual framework for categorizing all of the tools and practices of lean production
in five basic areas:
Value: Define value from the standpoint of the customer. However, in reality, the
final customer is th e o nly o ne w ho can s pecify the val ue of a specific pr oduct or
service by paying a price for it.
Value stream: View your product delivery sy stem as a con tinuous flow of
processes that add value to the product.
Flow: The product should constantly be moving through the value stream towards
the customer at the pace of demand.
Pull: Product should be pulled through the value stream at th e customers demand
rather than being pushed on to the customer
Perfection: The never-ending pursuit of eliminating waste in the system such that
the products can flow seamlessly through the value stream at the rate of demand.

2. Literature Survey
VSM can serv e a s a go od starting p oint for any enterprise tha t want s t o be le an and
describe value st ream as a collection of all value added a nd non-value added activities
which are required to bring a product or a g roup of products using th e sam e resources
through the main flows, from raw material to the hands of customers (Chandandeep, 2006).
Researchers define the VSM as the process of visually mapping the flow of information
and m aterial. It he lps to visualize the station cycle tim es, inve ntory a t each sta ge,
manpower a nd information f low a cross t he s upply c hain ( Womack a nd J ones, 1996). A
value s tream map provides a blueprint f or im plementing lean m anufacturing c oncepts by
illustration how the flow of information and materials should operate.
Balkema a nd Rotterdam (2 004) have c reated curr ent sta te map fo r a ste el producer, a
steel service center and first-tier component supplier. The current state map identifies huge
piled of inventory and long lead-time. In the future state map target areas were subjected to
different lean tools including kanban, supermarket, and continuous flow.
Ballard and Howell (1994) suggest that, the value stream mapping can serve as a good
starting point for any enterprise that wants to be lean. It prov ides a common language for

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talking a bout m anufacturing process. It tie s to gether le an c oncepts a nd t echniques which

help to avoid "cherry picking". It forms the basis for an implementation plan by helping to
design t he whole f low. Ha lpan a nd Kue ckmann ( 2001) e xplain value strea m mapping in
aircraft manufacturing. They draw current and future state maps were developed with the
objective of reducing lead time according to customer requirements. The implementation of
the f uture state m ap attained l ead-time re duction. S ummer, 1 998 has described A ctivity
Based C osting ( ABC), ide ntify various c ost components a nd a nalyze t he relative
contribution to the tota l cos t. The es sence of ABC is that, product consumes act ivity,
activity consumes resource and resources generate cost. Thus it is necessary to develop the
relationship b etween acti vity, c oast drivers an d ac tivity measures. Target c osting is to
anticipate the ac ceptable ma rket p rice th rough in tensive customer focus. D esign and
manufacturing teams all ies to b ring th e product within th e targ et cost. Targ et cost is the
cost that can be incurred while still earning the desired benefit. The objective of the present
work is to demonstrate how a manufacturing system op erates with timing of step-by step
activities.

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3. Methodology
The various steps in implementation of VSM are shown in Figure 1 and are discussed in
the following sections. The process analyses is carried out by collecting data from various
enquiries with shop floor experts and directly participates in measuring the time involved in
various processes (Sahoo et al, 2008).

Figure 1. Steps in implementing Value Stream Map

The new con cept in troduced in the autho rs rese arch i s to ma p/measure th e cost
involved i n the va lue s tream. T he stu dy re searches led us t o i nvolve various costing
systems and inventory management systems. A case study of a small motor manufacturing
company participated in LEAN project has also been presented. The current and future state
drawings are mapped for the shaft manufacturing. Future state maps were developed with
the objective of reducing lead time and cost according to customer requirement.
The cost analysis is carried out b y adding the es sence of ac tivity based costing and
target costing. In this paper, while gen erating the VSM, the main processes are identified
and the processing costs are calculated for individual processes, now these individual costs

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are the a ctivity cost .The summation of th e activity costs gives the manufacturing cost of
the product. The calculations of the activity cost are elaborated in methodology.
The conce pts o f ABC inv entory management sy stem is u sed to classify the handling
cost of the work i n process i nventory. S o t he c lassification of th e i nventory helps us t o
differentiate the various cos ts inc urred i n handling the different w ork i n p rocess between
different stations. The redesigned VSM is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Cost Integrated Value Stream Map

The present study uses the philosophy of target costing to set the t arget manufacturing
cost. Target cost is the cost that can be incurred while still earning the desired profit. The
target cost is calculated as follows:
Target cost = Selling price Desired profit (1)

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3.1 Process Analysis

The m ajor activity i n the process analysis is t o portrait t he ti me lin e. Th e ti me li ne
contains both value added and non-value added time and is calculated as follows:
(2)
VTi = CTi

NVTi = (3)

Processing time =
(4)

Processing lead time =

(5)
3.2 Cost Analysis
The id ea is to add a cost line alo ng with the e xisting time l ine in VSM. Co st line
enables better vis ualization a nd also improves the cla rity of d ecision m aking. While the
value added cost is brought ou t by th e summation o f the d irect co st invo lved in eac h
process, non value added cost analysis is brought about by classifying the inventory as per
the holding cost. The cost calculations are as follows:

Value added Activity cost = +

=0 (when no material is added in a activity) (6)
Nonvalue added activity cost = + (7)

Customer ready to pay = +

(8)

Customer not ready to pay = +

(9)
4. Case Study
A case study con ducted at a motor manufacturing co mpany i s presented a nd so me o f
the observations may be useful to the practicing engineers in implementing VSM in small,
medium a nd la rge enterprises. M uch of the ea rlier w ork have a ttempted c omplementary
lean manufacturing too ls in la rge s cale industries and have rec orded their e xperiments.
Hence, there is a need to implement such a lean tool in small and medium size industries.

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4.1 Selection of Critical Product Family

The first step is the selection of the critical part family. After the through study of all
part families, one part family was rather preferred over all the product families. The Rotor
is main heart of the motor.
4.2 Documentation of Customer Information
Interaction with the manager revealed information regarding customers requirement. It
was understood, the company has a wide range of customers requesting for a wide range of
product from 0 .5 hp to 20 hp motor. The requirement of motors was estimated to be 1000
motors/month.
4.3 Identification of Main Processes
A quick walk th rough th e shop fl oor (gemba) helped us in identifying th e main
processes. T he m ain processes in volved i nclude: bar cu tting, roughing, F inishing,
Threading I, Threading II, key machining and rotor turning.

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Figure 3. Current State Map

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4.4 Define the Data to be collected

The data in th e da ta box se rves to track down the opportunities for i mprovement.
Collection of appropriate d ata b enefits in qui ck t racking o f opp ortunities. The data box
envelopes the following data like cycle time, change over time, up time, machine hour rate,
labor hour rate, material cost and the available time. The inventory triangle envelopes two
data, work in p rocess inventory b etween eac h process and respective handling cost of
inventory. Cost and time lines are calculated using the above mentioned model. The current
state map is shown in Figure 3.
4.4 Future state map
The objective of the future state map is to match the production rate with TAKT time
and to achieve the target cost as the manufacturing cost. Hear, for the present study TAKT
time is take n as t he benchmark for process pace and target cost was set as the b enchmark
for the manufacturing cost
4.5 TAKT time: a Benchmark for Process Pace
Takt demonstrates the rate at which the customer buys the product. TAKT reflects the
frequency at which th e p roduct has to release by the m anufacturer to m eet customer
demands. Takt time is calculated by dividing available working time per shift (in sec) with
the customer demand per shift.

TAKT Time =

Available working time per shift = Operating time - Breaks

= 23280 seconds/shift
Demand=1000 shafts/month
Demand per shift=40 shafts/shift
TAKT time = 582 seconds/shift

TAKT o f 5 83 rep resents that, every shaft has to be co mpleted in e very 582 sec onds.
The current state map sights out that the roughing process consumes 18 seconds more than
takt time. In order t o solve this, fi nishing and roughing processes are carried out in the
CNC machine, thus reducing set-up time and other manual interactions; also the cycle time

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of th e process i s re duced to 120 seconds. T he old mac hine is dedicated to th read cutting
operation only. Thus, the total line is balanced.

4.6 Target cost: a Benchmark for Product Cost

Target cost is se t by subtracting the market cost by the target profit; the target profit is
assigned by the management. The target cost reflects the cost at which the product has to be
manufactured. In t his case after consulting with the management, the target cost was set at
Rs125. Now the lean tools serves as a cost minimization tool to minimize the gap between
the Target cost and manufacturing cost.
Daily shipment of bar stock was implemented to reduce the handling cost at the start of
the value stream. Sin gle minute exch ange of dyes wa s imp lemented in the CNC mac hine
(finishing process), in order to minimize the lot/batch size. The future state map is shown in
figure 4.

5. Results and Discussions

The implementation of daily shipment resulted in reducing the inventory handling cost
from Rs. 30 to Rs. 9, and the inventory is reduced from 100 parts to 30 parts at the start of
the va lue stream. The implementation of SME D serves t o re duce the in ventory by 6 6%
before the finishing process.

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Figure 4. Future State Drawing

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Graphs ar e en closed to v isualize t he ben efits in i mplementing l ean tool s are

presented in Figure 5-8.

Figure 5. Comparisons of cycle time of current and future state

Figure 6. Comparison of processing time in seconds

Figure 7. Comparison of processing lead time in days

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Figure 8. Comparison of product cost

6. Conclusions
This research carries evidence of genuine advantages of applying lean principles in a
small scale m otor manufacturing. As far as our knowledge is concerne d, it is the first
time cost analysis is integrated with the value stream map. It was evidenced that VSM is
an ideal tool to expos e the waste in value stream an d identify improvement areas. This
paper substantiates the effectiveness of lean principle in a sy stematic mann er with th e
help of va rious t ools, s uch as c ost anal ysis in v alue stream ma pping, single m inute
exchange o f dy es and so on . Availability of inf ormation s uch as m aterial and m oney
flow f acilitates a nd va lidates t he de cisions to im plement lean m anufacturing, fu rther
would a lso m otivate t he or ganization dur ing the actua l im plementation i n or der to
obtain the desired benefits. Eventually it e nables the c ompanies to m ove towards their
ultimate goal leading to, sustainability, profit and profitability.

7. References
Balkema, A.A. and Rotterdam , Lean Construction, International Journal of Production
Economics 2004; pp.111-125.
Ballard, G. and Howe ll, G., Implementing lean construction, Journal of Production and
Inventory management 1994; pp. 37-48.
Grewal, C., An initiative to implement lean manufacturing using value stream mapping
in a small company, Int. J. Manufacturing technology and management 2006; pp
55-61.

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Halpin, D.W. and Kueckmann, M., Lean Construction & Simulation, Proceedings of the
Winter Simulation Conference 2001; pp 131-139.
Ohno, T., Toyota Production system Bey ond Large-scale produ ction: Produ ctivity
press; 1988.
Sahoo, A.K., Singh, N.K., Shankar, R. and Tiwari, MK., Lean philosophy: implementation
in a forging company, International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing
Technology 2008; pp.125-131.
Shingo, S. and Dillon, A.P., A study of the T oyota produc tion system : Productivity
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Summer, C .R., Th e R ise o f A ctivity-Based co sting. Part One: What Is an Activity-
Based Cost system?, Journal of Cost Management 1998; pp. 45-54.
Womack, J. D., J ones, D.T . a nd R oos, D., The Mac hine th at Ch anged th e Wo rld: Th e
study of Lean Production, Harper Perennial Publishers: New York; 1990.
Womack, J.P. and J ones, D.T., Lean thinking: ba nish w aste and cr eate w ealth in you r
corporation, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster; 1996.

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