Recently, someone shared that a multi-national company with a good Lean pedigree was looking to rationalize their facilities so that each facility served only market "A" or market "B," but not both, like many do now. This makes very little sense, especially in light of the fact that the same value stream serves both markets and there is no substantial difference in "A" or "B's" design tolerances, required process capabilities, delivery channel, service levels, etc. In other words, value, as defined by "A" and "B," relative to the order to delivery phase, is the same! Here value delivery should be considered market agnostic.
Value stream management and improvement should be focused by product or service family. The families are traditionally identified by the use of a matrix that shows the intersection of products (or services) with processes. These matrices go by different names, but they're the same thing - product family analysis matrix, product family matrix, process routing matrix or product quantity proces (PQPr) matrix.
While the production folks who work within the company referenced above should understand and care about the different markets that they serve, the value stream must be their primary lens and lever for making value flow. The sales and marketing guys, R&D people, field support, etc. must be concerned about the markets and their specific needs but there has to be some very compelling reasons to split up the family in other portions of the value stream... and there must be critical mass.
What are your thoughts? When does it make sense to split the family?