Makigami

What is Makigami?

Makigami is a form of process flow analysis. The term comes from Japanese and means rolled (maki) paper (kami). On this paper roll, company processes are recorded and visualised by breaking them down into individual process steps and depicting them on a time axis as a flow chart with all interfaces.

What does Makigami contain?

Makigami makes company processes transparent and thus enables them to be analysed and improved. The method uncovers non-value-adding activities and their causes such as interface and communication problems or unnecessary process steps and documentation. It is thus particularly suitable for the internal efficiency improvement of administrative processes and services.

As a continuation of a SIPOC diagram (Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer), Makigami is fundamentally designed to detect waste in processes. This is because every service process contains value-creating activities as well as value-enabling activities and potential waste. All process steps and interfaces between the departments involved are examined. This creates a compact and condensed overview of important information:

• a basic understanding of an ACTUAL process
• a basic transparency of input/output links within a process chain (internal “customer-supplier relationship”)
• timing of individual activities in the process
• Interfaces (-problems) between departments and process owners
• Number of interfaces, means of communication and documents
• Allocation of relevant problems (qualitative) per process step
• Value-adding and non-value-adding activities and process steps (quantified)
• specific analysis perspectives on total process times, value-added shares and process efficiencies

What are the advantages of Makigami?

Makigami enables the identification of central levers for the improvement of the process under consideration. A Makigami map documents an administrative process in a fundamental and team-oriented way, but it also forms the basis for further analysis and opens up fundamental perspectives for targeted improvement. A further comparison of ACTUAL and TARGET processes as Makigami is then a good basis for being able to communicate changes.

Makigami is constantly developing in its sub-disciplines for the representation, analysis and design of processes in the administrative environment and thus forms a useful complement to approaches of value stream design.