Identify the components of a value stream map - Microsoft Excel Tutorial

- [Instructor] In the previous movie, we looked at the philosophy behind value stream maps. In this movie, I will introduce the symbols used in value stream maps, to identify workstations, information flows, inventory, and other important information that drives your analysis. We'll start by looking at process data icons. And these are icons that indicate stations, and also flows within a particular process. We'll start with the process box itself. And this is a workstation where things are actually done. You'll see it as a single box with a line indicating a place for a title, and then other information. The title might be to attach the legs to a cat robot for example. You can also identify the number of full time equivalent employees that you have working. Now that might be four people who half time, and you indicate the number of people who are available, or at least are trained to perform a specific task by indicating that within the box. A person is generally indicated using the symbol that you see near the middle of the slide. You hardly ever see it by itself, instead, you will often see it in conjunction with other items. For example, inside the process box. Next, you have a data box. And these boxes hold information about a particular process. Typically, they're placed below the process box in a Value Stream Map. So you might have the processing time for a particular station, the time it takes to do the work, then you might have a cycle time. The cycle time is the processing time, divided by the number of employees that you have available. In this case it's just one, so it's the same as the processing time. One other bit of information you could include, and there are a lot of others. But one will work with is utilization. This is typically expressed as a percentage. Utilization refers to the amount of time of the total time allowed, that the process is taking up. I'll get into that in more detail later in the course. There are also what I call work in process icons, that includes inventory. The symbol for inventory is a triangle pointing upwards. You typically identify the amount of inventory you have available, that is 10 days worth of supplies. And you can use other indicators, such as RM, which stands for raw materials, or FG, which stands for finished goods. Raw materials would occur at the start of the process, finished goods at the end. You can also identify workflow direction, and that is this stylizer that you see here. And that will indicate how physical items flow within a process. Finally, there are information flow icons. Information is absolutely vital to any process. First you need to identify your customers or suppliers or basically any outside entity. They are often indicated using the shape that you see here. If you think about it for a second, you can almost see that the jagged edge looks like a factory with smokestacks. Or at least, I believe that's what it comes from. You can also indicate the flow of an order. And this would be an order coming to you from a supplier. And finally, there is pure information. This could be electronic records, it could be data, and those are typically identified using a jagged line. All these components will be used within value stream maps. Although value stream mapping is still a relatively new practice. So you might see some variation, but the ones that I showed you are the most common.