TRANSPORTATION VALUE STREAM MAPPING APPROACH FOR MULTIMODAL TRANSPORT: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Value stream mapping had its origin in the lean manufacturing, material and information flow diagrams developed originally by Ohno (1988) in Toyota and called it Toyota Production System. Firstly, it was used to identify the source of wastes in the manufacturing area and eliminate them. This has already been extended to help in the design of improvement programs oriented to eliminate waste in logistics and service operations. Then it was adapted to support efficiency improvement programs in the transport operations environment. A new value stream map and an efficiency measure for transport operations were proposed by Villarreal (2012) and it was referred to as Transportation Value Stream Mapping (TVSM). TVSM is a Value Stream Mapping approach for distribution operations for identifying availability, performance and quality wastes. One of the lean manufacturing tools which is VSM was used to find bottlenecks, the source of wastes and serves as an applied case study to reveal the current logistics process map (via Transportation Value Stream Mapping) and detailed transportation processes from a large food packaging manufacturer to its European customers through its logistics partners. The study aims to examine the transportation process of the case study firm from picking up the goods from its warehouse to delivering them to its customers and find a solution to optimize transportation routes, transit costs and transit time during this process in detail. Beresford time cost distance model was used after TVSM analyzes as a method to find alternative route options and compare the routes to each other to find an optimal transportation route for the case study company in terms of transportation costs, transit times and distance. One company for each country (Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands) was identified and all Logistics Engineering M.Sc, Dokuz Eylul University, Maritime Faculty, Izmir Yigithalim.bulut@ogr.deu.edu.tr. Assoc. Prof. Dr., Dokuz Eylul University, Maritime Faculty, Izmir gul.denktas@deu.edu.tr. possible shipping routes included the current routes, as well as alternative routes, were examined in this research. Transportation routes were compared to each other in terms of advantages and disadvantages.