Improving The Process Of Adopting Standards In Qatar Using Lean Thinking

Abstract

To achieve the goals of Qatar National Vision 2030 in terms of economic development, Qatar Standards (QS) are adopting international standards to ensure that the manufactured or imported products meet the security, safety, health, and environmental requirement as per the accredited standards and technical regulations to guarantee that trade flows as smoothly and freely as possible. Every year, Qatar Standards (QS) works with its committee members (industry, academia, control authorities) to develop and identify standards based on response to industry or other stakeholders' requests. Therefore, this project aims to apply Lean thinking methodology to improve the process of adopting standards. Value Stream Mapping (VSM), Fishbone diagram (Ishikawa diagram), and Pareto analysis are used as Lean thinking tools to analyze the different activities of the process in order to identify the different kinds of waste and non-value-added activities in the procedure and hence remove or at least minimize their negative impact on the process performance. First, the current process was described using a process mapping flowchart, and then Value Stream Mapping (VSM) was applied to study the current process's steps. The non-value-added activities were analyzed and minimized by using the Fishbone diagram and Pareto analysis. Finally, the future process was established, and hence a 36.6% reduction of the processing lead time has been achieved. Finally, this research project proves to bring a valuable contribution by adding more value and less waste to the process of adopting a standard in Qatar.