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Industrial Engineering & Manufacturing vocabulary · Lean Manufacturing

Value stream mapping

Meaning in industrial engineering & manufacturing, with examples

nounCommon term

In industrial engineering & manufacturing, value stream mapping means: A lean method of drawing all the steps, material flows and information flows needed to make a product, to see where time is lost and plan improvements. Often shortened to VSM.

In Turkish: değer akış haritalama, değer akışı haritalama

How it is used

Teams draw a current-state map and then a future-state map, using standard symbols for processes, inventory and data boxes. The map usually shows that value-added time is a tiny part of total lead time. It is done by walking the real process, not from the office.

Example sentences

  1. Value stream mapping showed that the product spends 11 days in the plant but is worked on for only 40 minutes.

  2. We'll start the project with a value stream mapping workshop next Tuesday.

Common collocations

  • value stream mapping workshop
  • current-state map
  • future-state map
  • draw a value stream map
  • lean manufacturingA way of running production that aims to deliver what the customer needs with the least waste of time, material and effort, based on the Toyota Production System.
  • wasteIn lean thinking, any activity that uses time or resources but adds no value for the customer, such as waiting, extra movement or making too much.
  • value-addedDescribing an activity that changes a product in a way the customer is willing to pay for, such as machining, assembling or painting it.
  • lead timeThe total time between the start of a process, such as receiving an order, and its end, such as delivering the product to the customer.

More terms: Lean Manufacturing

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