During a Value-Added Flow Analysis, the team studied a process step where they checked the customer's credit. What is the best label for this step?

Non-Value-Adding but required.

Explanation:

A Value-Added flow analysis is a graphical visualization tool that is used for identifying non-essential activities or steps within a process. It basically, allows individuals or team to analyze, identify and separate value-adding activities from non-value-adding activities or steps in an organization. This simply means that, it avails an organization or business the ability to separate activities that add value for the user from the activities that are non-value-adding.

The value-adding activities are the steps that adds value to an organization's product or project while the non-value-adding activities are those steps which do not add any value to the organization's product.

In this scenario, during a value-added flow analysis, the team studied a process step where they checked the customer's credit. The best label for this step is Non-value-adding but required.

The process of checking a customer's credit is a necessary task or a required step but in the real sense of lean, it is considered as a non-value-adding activity. This is simply because, it is required to check the customer's credit in order to update the balance sheet and to know the amount that is granted to these customers.

However, it does not add any value to the organization.