Flow Charts

Generally, any process that needs to be analysed has to be conducted in real situations, and a way to prevent having lots of written documents which may be misinterpreted, is by the use of visual management. The use of visual management, allows you to engage the whole business to understand what is actually happening, especially with flow process analysis. This allows you to utilise charts and diagrams to represent the true situation at hand.

However, the premise required to complete these charts and diagrams is that you must have observations obtained from your data.
There are three helpful ways where you can visually attain these diagrams, using flow charts, spaghetti diagrams, and a process map. This session focuses on flow charts.

Flow charts help us to understand the elements of a process in simple terms, by allocating symbols to each task, there are eight symbols we can use. 
When carrying out your observations, make sure to capture details in each step, then use the documentation collected to determine whether each step is value added, non-value added, or necessary non-value added.

Once this process is completed, draw a line on the chart to visually show if the data obtained resembles a smooth process or if it’s all around the place, moreover you can also work out what percentage of the process each category attributes to. To aid this visual management, you can use this data to create a pie chart to show the main categories. The advantages of completing this step are that, you’ll have a true reflection of what’s happening, data on each step, visual displays of the process and how it flows.  

Learning Objectives:
•Generate an understanding of the advantages of visual management
•Identify what a flow chart is
•Recognise how to use a flow chart