Mapping the Total Value Stream or Tracing Genres through Organizations

Mapping the Total Value Stream: A Comprehensive Guide for Production and Transactional Processes

Author: Mark A Nash

Mapping the Total Value Stream defines and elaborates on the concepts of value stream mapping (VSM) for both production and transactional processes. This book reshapes and extends the lessons originally put forward in a number of pioneering works including the popular ,Value Stream Management for the Lean Office. It reinforces fundamental concepts and theoretical models with real-world applications and complete examples of the value stream mapping technique. To educate VSM mappers on the specific mechanics of the technique, the text provides in-depth explanations for commonly encountered situations.

The authors also provide a more complete perspective on the concept of availability. While they discuss availability of equipment in
transactional processes, they extend the concept by elaborating on availability as it applies to employees. The calculation of process lead time for work queues is taken to an advanced level - not only is the calculation of this lead time explained, but the text also covers the very real possibility of having more work in the queue than available time.

While previous books have focused on only production process VSM or transactional process VSM, this work meets the real needs of both manufacturers and service sector organizations by dealing with both types. It goes beyond explaining each scenario, to teach readers what techniques are commonly applicable to both, and also explains areas of difference so that mappers will be able to readily adapt to whatever unique situations present themselves.

Books about: Java Concepts or Harvard Business Review on Organizational Learning

Tracing Genres through Organizations: A Sociocultural Approach to Information Design

Author: Clay Spinuzzi

Winner of the 2004 Best Book in Technical of Scientific Communication Award presented by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)

In Tracing Genres through Organizations, Clay Spinuzzi examines the everyday improvisations by workers who deal with designed information and shows how understanding this impromptu creation can improve information design. He argues that the traditional user-centered approach to design does not take into consideration the unofficial genres that spring up as workers write notes, jot down ideas, and read aloud from an officially designed text. These often ephemeral innovations in information design are vital components in a genre ecology (the complex of artifacts mediating a given activity). When these innovations are recognized for what they are, they can be traced and their evolution as solutions to recurrent design problems can be studied. Spinuzzi proposes a sociocultural method for studying these improvised innovations that draws on genre theory (which provides the unit of analysis, the genre) and activity theory (which provides a theory of mediation and a way to study the different levels of activity in an organization).

After defining terms and describing the method of genre tracing, the book shows the methodology at work in four interrelated studies of traffic workers in Iowa and their use of a database of traffic accidents. These workers developed an ingenious array of ad hoc innovations to make the database better serve their needs. Spinuzzi argues that these inspired improvisations by workers can tell us a great deal about how designed information fails or succeeds in meeting workers' needs. He concludes byconsidering how the insights reached in studying genre innovation can guide information design itself.

Table of Contents:

	Series Foreword
	Preface
1	Introduction: Tyrants, Heroes, and Victims in Information Design	1
	"Writers, Writers Everywhere": Positioning the User in Technical Communication	5
	Fieldwork-to-Formalization Methods: Observing Workers, Modeling Behavior	10
	Official and Unofficial Solutions	18
2	Integrating Research Scope	25
	The Problem of Unintegrated Scope	27
	From Artifacts to Genres	37
	From Genres to Genre Ecologies	47
	From Genre Ecologies to Genre Tracing	50
3	Tracing Genres across Developmental Eras: The ALAS Activity System	59
	Studying Genre Ecologies in Cultural-Historical Terms	63
	Overview of the ALAS Activity System	71
	Before 1974: Preautomation Accident Location and Analysis	74
	1974: Mainframe-ALAS (IBM 3090 Mainframe)	83
	1989: PC-ALAS (DOS)	92
	1996: GIS-ALAS (Windows)	104
4	Tracing Genres across Levels of Scope: A Study of PC-ALAS Use	113
	Genres and Destabilizations: Issues in Tracing Genres across Levels of Scope	114
	Tracing Genres in the ALAS Activity System	122
5	Embedded Contradictions: Two Studies of GIS-ALAS Genre Hybrids	159
	Importing Genres, Making Hybrids, Forming Contradictions	160
	GIS-ALAS at Work	171
	GIS-ALAS at School	186
6	Designing Open Systems: Possible Trajectories for ALAS Genres	201
	Open Systems: A Definition and Three Examples	203
	Redesigning ALAS as an Open System	211
	Notes	225
	References	229
	Index	241