Effective planning is a significant contributor in elevating value stream mapping from a tool to a management practice that produces long-lasting transformation

Companies that reorganize without understanding their value streams may experience short-term improvement, but longer-term gains are far more likely by using value stream thinking to shape the reorganization.

a typical value stream map has three key components: information flow, work flow, and a timeline.

It's the process of value stream mapping rather than the maps themselves that carries the greatest power by installing transformational mindsets and behaviors into the DNA of an organization.

Very few things are unmanageable once they are distilled to their basic components.

Value stream mapping provides a clear line of sight to the customer and the holistic means to clearly see how traditionally disparate parts of the organization are interconnected, which can serve as the catalyst for reorganizing according to value streams.

The visual nature of value stream maps enables consensus-building conversations across the organization, from the front lines to senior leaders.

ways to achieve flow . . . include shifting previously consecutive processes to parallel activities, combining tasks to reduce handoffs (which may require cross-training, resequencing, or repatterning work so that downstream recipients can so more effective work), resequencing work, and creating service-level agreements between internal suppliers and customers, to name a few.

Ideally, the team designs a future state the results in lower lead time, lower process time, and higher percent complete and accurate for every process block.

before an improvement team can eliminate batching or reduce batch sizes, it needs to understand and eliminate the reason (root cause) for the batching