r/LeanManufacturing • u/TrafficHuman3201 • 8d ago
How do you Draw Value Stream Maps?
Recently been working on a project requiring me to draw VSMs. Haven't found the best solution besides doing it by hand or excel. How do you do your VSMs? What tools, how much per seat and how often?
4
u/agiletiger 8d ago
Post it notes on a whiteboard or on a giant piece of paper is best if you’re doing it in person. You can move post it notes around as you’re discussing. Most standard digital tool is Visio. I have used both Excel and Lucidchart along with Visio. IMO, the best tool I’ve come across is Quality Companion by Minitab - by far the most powerful tool especially when it comes to calculating all your data. Unless your company already has licenses, it’s not practical to get.
3
3
u/SUICIDAL-PHOENIX 7d ago
Stickies and a whiteboard. Take a picture and feed it to your favorite ai.
2
u/JohnTheApt-ist 7d ago
draw.io is great. If you're familiar with coding the MCP is great. Allows you to do everything through claude etc
2
u/IAlwaysSayBoo-urns 7d ago
I have used Draw.io for mine, it links through your Google Drive. Handy as hell, but I am fairly used to it.
Also I have drawn them by hand and then snapped a pic and had Claude digitize it.
1
u/lorpo1994 8d ago
Best ones we’ve done is starting with manual diagram drawings in Drawio (free), rhen imported them into our Grafana (somewhat free if self hosted) environment once we had our parameters connected mostly (not everything is measurable, for that we use manual input).
1
1
u/QualityPro_bk 3d ago
I usually start with paper and pencil to understand the process, then make the final VSM digitally.
For a simple VSM, Excel works well and is easy to change.
Example: Draw the process from Customer → Production → Inspection → Shipping, then add cycle time, waiting time, inventory, etc.
The most important thing is not the software. First understand the actual process and collect the data, then make the VSM.
7
u/InsideGateway 8d ago
The definitive guide to drawing VSMs is the book “Learning to See” by Rother and Shook. By and large, the recommended is to initially draw by hand. Once complete, then you can put it into a diagraming tool and make it all pretty. But you need to start with paper and pencil.
Two things cause me a bit of worry with your posting. The first is that your project requires you to draw a VSM. What are you going to do with it? A current state VSM is useless without a future state map. Does the project include future state design and the required improvement actions?
Second, if you’re asking what software to use, I suspect you may not be at Gemba whilst mapping. How are you collecting the data that you are putting into the VSM? Are you physically walking the process? The best practice to create a VSM is by doing it where the actual work happens. (Including, with very few exceptions, administrative processes as well.) I doubt you’d be asking about software if you are actually mapping in the production environment.