ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the assessment phase of the Baseline, Analyze or Assess, Suggest Solutions, Implement, Check, and Sustain (BASICS) model. Lean analysis tools are used to dissect a process into its finest parts, down to the second. A process has an input and an output with some transformation occurring in between where the material or information is somehow physically changed. Dr. Shigeo Shingo described manufacturing as a network of operations. Dr. Shingo credits Frank Gilbreth as the first to discover that operations were different from processes. A Lean process flow is obtained by configuring machines and materials in exact order required to produce the product. Setup reduction minimizes setups by moving as many internal tasks to external tasks, with a target of zero setup time. To conduct a Process-Flow Analysis (PFA) analysis correctly, one must become the thing going through the process, whether it is a product, a patient in health care, a person in a government agency, or information.
