By Mike Loughrin, CEO for Transformance Advisors
Powerful Tool
Value Stream Mapping is one of the most powerful tools from the Lean toolbox.
The “maps” you might have seen are created by teams during “mapping” sessions. However, it is the team oriented approach which makes value stream mapping powerful and effective; it’s not just the maps.
This article will provide an overview of what value stream mapping will look and feel like as part of a Lean improvement project.
Relax and prepare to enjoy, you are not about to be pounded with dozens of special symbols, detailed step-by-step instructions, or obscure Japanese words.
Achieving Clarity
Fact: You can visit the Louvre in Paris to view and appreciate the Mona Lisa; you will not leave with the knowledge and skills required to paint a masterpiece.
A common error, often caused by bad advice, is to look at a few value stream maps and conclude this is an easy activity which people should instinctively know how to do.
In my search for understanding, I have been amazed at the number of books, articles, slide shows, videos, etc. which show a few examples and tell a few stories. This is closed out with a false claim that the reader or viewer is now educated and ready to fly the plane.
I was generally left with a sense of frustration. I know what a map looks like. I know mapping is a powerful tool. But what does it take to do it?
Definitions
Let’s start with a few definitions:
- Value Stream: all activities (value add, business value add, and non-value add) performed to meet a customer or stakeholder request.
- Value Stream Map: a visual representation of activities and flows of information, materials, and services performed to accomplish specific objectives.
- Value Stream Mapping: a team-based systematic approach to create value stream maps which identify waste in the current state or paint the vision of a future state with less waste.
In terms of value stream mapping, the key aspects we need to explore further include:
- Team-Based
- Systematic Approach
- Current State
- Future State
Team Based
Fact: Value stream mapping is not a solo sport; create a map by yourself and you will gain zero buy-in and have zero chance of delivering lasting improvement.
Pulling together the right team is critical.
You want people who do the work. Plus, you want representatives from suppliers and customers of the work.
The “work” can be anything – product development, sales, marketing, procurement, order entry, accounts payable, etc.
The “work” can be a huge organization wide value stream or some smaller partial stream.
A challenge can be limiting the size of the team to be most effective. Keeping at 6 to 8 people is generally best.
- Too many people can decrease effectiveness and lead to the loss of participation.
- Too few people can mean critical knowledge is not available.
Now, if the scope of the mapping exercise is very large and includes many functional areas, then you will have a larger team and need to manage the dynamics.
Generally, you do not want the “boss” to be active during the actual mapping efforts. The boss must be actively engaged, but their role is more about leadership and supporting the needs of the mapping team. I’d rather see the boss hand out soda and ice cream than see them holding the Sharpie and writing on the post-it notes.
One more point: the mapping team is often comprised of representatives from each functional area and these people will need to become champions for the coming changes. Each functional area needs to place their best talent and future leaders on the mapping team.
Systematic Approach
Fact: If you don’t know where you are going, then any path will get you there.
In a similar manner, if you know you want a value stream map, then take the proven path. Don’t waste your time wandering in the dark.
I promised you that I would not get into a ton of step-by-step instructions. There’s time for that down the road.
Experience demonstrates the best time to learn the specific steps is about 5 minutes before you will use them during your own mapping exercise.
The key aspects for the systematic approach include:
- Use simple steps – don’t have some huge nebulous step such as “draw the map” which leaves everyone unsure about exactly what to do.
- Ensure everyone is using the same steps. It’s an incredible waste when two Lean “experts” on a mapping team start to argue about what to do next.
My systematic approach has evolved over the years. It’s taken some time to reach a point where the steps are simple and everyone can use them to create a great map.
There are slight differences between what to do for a current state map and what to do for a future state map. I don’t recall seeing this in any book or article. It becomes quite obvious when you force yourself to simplify the steps and be crystal clear on what to do and when to do it.
Current State
Fact: A current state map needs to be at the level of detail which identifies the waste. This often means finding crazy stuff no one realizes is happening.
It sounds simple, but finding the right level of detail can be challenging.
Example 1:
- If you are mapping the entire product development value stream, then market research could be just one box on your map.
- If you are mapping the market research partial value stream, then your map may have 6 to 10 boxes for the detailed steps.
Example 2:
- If you are mapping the entire sales value stream, then create proposal could be just one box on your map.
- If you are mapping the create proposal partial value stream, then your map may have 6 to 10 boxes for the detailed steps.
It’s very rare to create some huge map which wraps around the entire conference room running out the door and down the hallway. Such a large map reflects a project with scope and expectations which were too big or poorly articulated.
Future State
Fact: The future state map needs to paint a vision with less waste. Don’t go for an old fashioned 5% improvement, but don’t jump to impossible perfection.
The key challenges include knowing how much change is possible and making sure the team investigates best practices and emerging trends which should be considered.
Common Error 1 is to reach for perfection in the future state. This may set up an impossible goal. For example, one team working on poor inventory control in their warehouse mapped out a future state which simply said everyone knew exactly what to do and never made any mistakes. Wave a wand and achieve perfection. A more realistic future state was to fix the cycle counting program which would find and eliminate the reasons for poor inventory control.
Common Error 2 is to fall into the trap, told by Lean charlatans, where you assume the people who do the work know how to fix it. The correct meaning of the concept is how people, who do the work, know what needs to be fixed. They are the ones who must create the current state map and identify the waste. The people who do the work may not know the best practices and emerging trends. They need to research and work with others to craft a better future. I am reminded of the many times I’ve been told how the software did not work and something new needed to be purchased. A little knowledge on how current software, should be used, will often lead to a vastly improved future state, without a big investment.
Powerful Examples
I asked Lean enthusists to share an example of a successful Value Stream Mapping Project.
Let’s look at 17 of the most exciting ones:
1. Lara Woodham, Director, Rowlen Boiler Services
I mapped our heat pump installation process and the real time sink was just paperwork moving between teams. We were losing days passing forms around. So we digitized everything and combined the site survey with scheduling. Now we finish a full week faster. It’s those small handoffs between people that get you. That’s where you should look for wasted time.
2. Mohammed Kamal, CEO, Edstellar
A project aimed at enhancing the lead generation and conversion process in a sales pipeline identified inefficiencies, particularly in the outreach phase, where long response times resulted from unclear communication. Furthermore, a bottleneck occurred during the qualification stage due to inadequate lead assessment.
3. Nikos Aapergis, Principal Consultant & Founder, Alphacron
I led a value stream mapping exercise on project delivery flow within a portfolio of manufacturing projects. The surprising bottleneck was not in technical execution, but in the way decisions moved through the organization. Small pauses for approval (often invisible in reporting) accumulated into significant delays that slowed entire projects.
The solution came from clarifying ownership. By introducing a structured decision framework (known as RACI), project teams gained the confidence to act without constant escalation. The immediate impact was felt in the rhythm of work: decisions were made closer to the point of action, escalations reduced and momentum returned across the portfolio.
The lesson for me was that value stream mapping can expose hidden waste in human systems. In this case, addressing decision latency restored pace in delivery and enabled confidence at the doer level, showing that Lean transformation is as much about empowering people as it is about streamlining processes.
4. Ben Sztejka, Managing Director, Your Ecommerce Accountant
I mapped our bookkeeping onboarding at Your Ecommerce Accountant, tracking from a client’s signup to their first full reconciliation. The big shock was realizing our team spent hours chasing missing Amazon statements and duplicating checks on two platforms. By centralizing information requests and automating data syncs, we not only cut onboarding time down by half but also reduced errorsmy suggestion is to map out where people wait for information, as that’s usually where hidden waste lives.
5. Ralph Pieczonka, Director, Simple Is Good Inc
My project involved a process where three different platforms where used for intake. We wasted so much time on redundant data entry and switching between systems. Once we moved everything to one AI tool, we captured all the info on the first call and sent proposals that same day. The difference was huge. Now I always tell people to map out every single handoff.
6. Matthew Reeves, CEO & Co-founder, Together Software
I thought our customer onboarding process was efficient. Turns out, my team was just typing the same customer data into two different systems. We connected them, and onboarding time straight-up dropped, along with typos. The biggest lesson is: you have to sit with the people actually doing the work. The real problems only show up when you do it with them..
7. Greg Hiltz, CEO, Paradigm Roof & Shield
We mapped the entire customer journey from storm damage call to signed contract, and the waste was embarrassing.
Homeowners were waiting 4-6 days for insurance adjusters while our sales team made multiple trips to the same property–once for inspection, again for measurements, then a third time to present options. We were literally driving past completed jobs to visit the same house three times. The shocking part? Customers told us the delays made them feel like we didn’t care, even though we were just following “how it’s always been done”.
We collapsed it into a single visit model where our team brings a tablet loaded with material samples, does the full inspection with drone footage, and walks the homeowner through insurance documentation on the spot. For storm work, we now coordinate directly with adjusters to be there the same day. Our average time-to-contract dropped from 11 days to 3, and our close rate jumped 34% because trust doesn’t survive week-long lag times.
The financial impact was immediate–we cut drive time waste by roughly 60 hours per month across the sales team, which let us handle 40% more leads without adding headcount. In roofing, speed equals trust, and trust equals signed contracts.
8. Arvind Rongala, CEO, Edstellar
Our value stream mapping initiative focused on the end-to-end employee onboarding and role-readiness process, spanning hiring approval to billable productivity. The assumption was that most delays came from training delivery itself, but the value stream map revealed the largest waste sitting upstream in handoffs between HR, IT provisioning, and learning teams. New hires were waiting an average of 12-15 days for system access and course sequencing approvals, creating idle time that added no value. By eliminating redundant approvals, standardizing skill pathways, and aligning training schedules with system readiness, cycle time was reduced by nearly 40 percent. What stood out was how invisible this waste had become because it lived between departments rather than within one function. Research from McKinsey shows that up to 60 percent of process delays in knowledge work come from handoffs and rework, not execution itself. That insight reinforced why value stream mapping remains one of the most powerful tools in Lean—it exposes hidden friction that organizations often normalize, unlocking speed and productivity gains without adding cost.
9. Sahil Agrawal, Founder and Head of Marketing, Qubit Capital
we mapped the product launch process, it looked like a workflow problem. It turned out to be a trust problem.
We mapped the entire product launch workflow across design, engineering, and marketing. Most people assumed delays came from approvals. The map revealed something else. Time was being lost while teams searched for or tried to confirm information that already existed somewhere else.
In response, we built a shared data layer and replaced status meetings with live flow metrics. Cycle time dropped, but the bigger gain was trust. Teams stopped checking each other’s work because they could finally see progress in real time.
What surprised us most was how waste showed up. It did not look like lack of effort. It looked like capable people searching for answers that the system had quietly buried.
10. Anupa Rongala, CEO, Invensis Technologies
As part of a Lean transformation initiative at Invensis Technologies, we used value stream mapping to improve the end-to-end procure-to-pay process for a global enterprise client in the manufacturing sector. The value stream spanned from purchase requisition to vendor payment, an area often assumed to be optimized through automation. The most surprising insight was that nearly 35% of total cycle time was consumed by non-value-added wait states caused by fragmented approvals, duplicate data entry across systems, and manual exception handling. By redesigning the workflow, standardizing approval thresholds, and eliminating redundant touchpoints, overall cycle time was reduced by over 40%, while first-pass accuracy improved significantly. Research from the Lean Enterprise Institute highlights that administrative value streams typically contain more than 50% waste, and this project reinforced that the biggest opportunities often sit in invisible handoffs rather than obvious operational steps. The experience underscored how value stream mapping, when applied beyond the shop floor, can unlock measurable
11. Karl Threadgold, Managing Director, Threadgold Consulting
We used value stream mapping to track the support tickets coming in while setting up new NetSuite clients. It turned out most problems happened because sales told customers one thing and implementation heard another. We created a simple handoff checklist right in NetSuite, and the repeat questions basically stopped. People got up and running faster too. It taught me that the mess is usually in the handoffs between teams.
12. Ibrahim Alnabelsi, VP – New Ventures, Prezlab
We used value stream mapping to figure out why our sales follow-up was taking so long. Both sales and account managers were typing the same customer details into our database. It was pure duplicate effort. Once we built some automation to handle the data entry, our follow-up time sped up and the profile errors just disappeared. I’d suggest looking closely at your team handoffs. You’ll be surprised how fast those little inefficiencies add up.
13. Neil Fried, Senior Vice President, EcoATMB2B
I led a value stream mapping project during a transformation effort at a marketing technology company seeking to scale its sustainability- and recycling-focused product line. We had a promising tech roadmap, yet our partnership workflow kept slowing us down. I mapped the full lifecycle of how a potential partner moved from first conversation to signed agreement and discovered that most delays came from handoffs between corporate development, product, and legal. The teams were working hard, but no one had a clear view of where time and information were getting lost.
The biggest surprise was how much waste was hidden in well-intentioned reviews. Each team added its own layer of caution, which made sense in isolation, although the combined effect stalled progress and even confused some partners. Once we aligned the groups around a single shared map, it became clear that we could streamline our intake, simplify our evaluation process, and remove duplicate touchpoints without sacrificing rigor. That cut cycle time significantly and helped us close partnerships that advanced our sustainability-focused initiatives. It also showed teams that clarity is an efficiency measure, especially when the work supports long-term environmental goals.
14. Graham Bennett, COO, Bennett Awards
I mapped custom award order process and found the real delays weren’t happening on the shop floor, they were in our inboxes. We were wasting too much time waiting for approvals on art designs. Instead of emailing back and forth, we set up a shared doc system for reviews, which sped up the approvals. Now, orders get into production much faster.
15. Joseph Melara, Chief Operating Officer, Truly Tough Contractors
We mapped our solar projects at Truly Tough from quote to inspection and found the biggest time sink was permits. We would lose days waiting on paperwork, which stalled installations and frustrated clients. After switching to digital pre-filing, that problem disappeared and our timelines shrank by almost a third. It’s worth looking at where you wait on other people; sometimes those are the simplest parts of a process to fix.
16. Tim Whiting, Owner, Whiting Window Siding and Roofing
I mapped our estimating-to-installation workflow for roof replacements after noticing we were losing qualified leads who’d already contacted us. We’d completed 25,000+ projects over 50 years, so I assumed our process was solid–turns out we had a blind spot the size of Maryland.
The shocking waste wasn’t material or labor time. It was *waiting*. Customers who requested quotes were waiting 4-7 days for estimates while we batched site visits by geography to “save drive time.” Meanwhile, they were calling three other roofers who showed up same-day. We were optimizing for our convenience and hemorrhaging $180K+ annually in lost contracts before anyone even saw our crew.
We flipped to same-day or next-day estimate appointments as the default, even if it meant “inefficient” driving. Our close rate jumped from 34% to 61% within four months. The real lesson: we were so focused on operational efficiency *after* the sale that we starved the front end. Speed-to-quote beat perfect routing every single time, especially for storm damage work where homeowners need answers immediately.
17. Albert Richer, Founder & Editor, WhatAreTheBest
I led a value stream mapping initiative that examined the order-to-fulfillment journey within a digital services company. The initial analysis highlighted execution speed as the source of delays, yet the map revealed that decision-making holdups consumed the majority of time. Teams were spending more time on approvals, handoffs, and rework than on actual delivery work. The team found that over 60% of their cycle time was spent waiting for approvals and clarifications instead of focusing on delivering results.
By implementing three key improvements—removing approval layers, clarifying ownership responsibilities, and establishing standardized input procedures without adding staff—they achieved a remarkable 50% reduction in lead time. The most impactful changes came from eliminating hidden coordination costs, which far outweighed the benefits of task optimization.
Summary – Value Stream Mapping
Value stream mapping is one of the most powerful Lean tools.
The key aspects for success are:
- Team-based with the people who do the work
- Systematic approach with simple steps everyone understands
- Current state maps that identify the waste
- Future state maps that paint a vision with less waste
One final point is to realize it takes repetition to become proficient at value stream mapping. Like a detective just seems to know which lead to follow, a great mapper knows what level of detail is appropriate and when the map has all the information – whether current state or future state.
Mike Loughrin
Mike Loughrin is the CEO and Founder of Transformance Advisors. He also teaches for Louisiana State University Shreveport and is on the board of directors for the Association for Supply Chain Management Northern Colorado.
Mike brings exceptional experience in industry, consulting services, and education. He has directed several Lean Transformation programs and has helped organizations such as Levi Strauss, Warner Bros., Cabela’s, Constellation Brands, Lexmark, and Sweetheart Cup.
Keeping a commitment to a balanced life, Mike loves downhill skiing, bicycle rides, and hiking in the mountains. See one of his trails of the month at: Little Switzerland.
Want More?
Current State Mapping Directions
Process Improvement Definitions
Future State Mapping Directions
What is Changeover Reduction?
What is Lean Transformation?
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References
What is Value Stream Mapping? by Lucidchart
Learning to See by Mike Rother