Food & beverage · worked example
Value stream map example: a sauce bottling line
A shared cooking kettle works to a weekly plan, the filling line loses more than a fifth of its time to stoppages and flavour flushes, and six days of finished pallets cover for it. Run through the guide, the line gets supermarkets after cooking and filling, a labelling-and-packing cell that sets the pace, and SMED and TPM on the filler.
The current state
Table sauces, 750 ml glass (6 flavours): 96 000 bottles a month (customer: Retail distribution centre), on 2 shifts of 8 hours. That makes 4 800 bottles a day and a takt time of 11.3 seconds. Filling & capping is over takt once stoppages and rework are counted (Filling & capping: 11.7 s effective against 11.3 s).
- Lead time
- 18 days
- raw material to customer
- Processing time
- 32 s
- actually worked on
- Flow efficiency
- 0.003%
- processing ÷ lead time
- Schedule points
- 4
- places told what to make
What the improvement guide recommends
Run through the builder's nine future-state questions, accepting each recommendation, this value stream gets one pacemaker (Labelling + Case packing) and these 10 actions — each one a kaizen burst on the future-state map:
- 1Pull (kanban)Set up a kanban supermarket after Batch cooking (about 7 200 bottles); Batch cooking makes only what Filling & capping withdraws
- 2SMEDCut Filling & capping changeover from 40 to 20 min (SMED)
- 3TPMRaise Filling & capping uptime from 78% to 95% (TPM: find and fix the stoppages)
- 4Pull (kanban)Set up a kanban supermarket after Filling & capping (about 7 200 bottles); Filling & capping makes only what Labelling + Case packing withdraws
- 5Continuous flowBuild a continuous-flow cell: Labelling + Case packing (3 operators, one piece at a time)
- 6TPMRaise Labelling uptime from 88% to 95% (TPM: find and fix the stoppages)
- 7PacemakerSend the customer schedule to Labelling + Case packing only — every other process is triggered by kanban or FIFO
- 8HeijunkaLevel the mix and volume at Labelling + Case packing: release one pitch of work (12 bottles) at a time from a load-leveling box
- 9Pull (kanban)Hold finished goods in a supermarket of about 7 200 bottles (1.5 days) that shipping withdraws from
- 10Supplier pullAgree daily deliveries with Packaging and ingredient suppliers and refill a raw-material supermarket from kanban
The future state: 18 days down to 6 days
- Lead time
- 6 days
- from 18 days (−67%)
- Stock
- 28 800 bottles
- from 86 400 (−67%)
- Working capital freed
- R1.04 million
- at R18 a unit
- Schedule points
- 1
- from 4
More value stream map examples
- Metal fabrication: steel brackets — the builder's main worked example, 37.5 days to 8.
- Furniture & joinery: painted cabinet doors — MDF doors through CNC cutting, sanding, a shared paint booth, drilling and packing — with repaint rework and a drilling station over takt.
- Clothing & textiles: workwear shirts — Shirts through cutting, a 30-operator sewing line, buttons, pressing and packing — with three weeks of fabric at the front and a sewing line over takt.
New to the symbols? See the VSM symbols cheat sheet.
Get the free Value Stream Walk Kit (Excel)
Free, instant download. We'll only email you the occasional practical quality update — no spam, unsubscribe anytime.