Value Stream Mapping

Draw the process as it actually is, step by step — then remove the steps that add no value.

The method is deliberately plain. Map the current state graphically, every step, including the waiting. Then let the people who work inside that process say which steps add value and which do not: the redundant review, the second approval, the copy nobody reads, the queue between two desks. What remains is the stream. Mapping the current state rather than the intended one is the whole discipline, because the waste almost always lives in the gap between them.

It is load-bearing because the system is built to create Value and eliminate Waste, and neither can be managed where neither can be seen. A body that has never drawn its own process argues about effort; a body that has drawn it argues about steps, which is a solvable argument. The savings are not only time: space, materials and attention are released with the steps that consumed them.

It reaches further than a factory. The same map can be drawn over how a decision gets made, how a newcomer is welcomed, how a request reaches someone who can answer it. Each is a stream with steps and waiting in it. The one caution is the one the whole lineage carries: optimise the whole, not the pieces — a stream cleaned in isolation can simply move its waiting somewhere less visible.

Also called: mapping the current state Stands on: Value · Waste · Lean Project Delivery · Theory Of Constraints Opens onto: Throughput · Continuous Improvement · Constraint · Quality In play: table · beyond Sources: Value Stream Mapping (wiki root page) · The LIØNSBERG Lexicon (Work In Progress) §The System · The Economic Case For IPD (wiki root page, unmarked, on flow and conversion) — lionsberg.wiki page name: Value Stream Mapping Open: none found.